Trove – free online search tool that brings together bibliographic records from libraries and archives. Best known for OCR, human corrected digitised newspapers.

Trove already has an interactive base – including lists, tagging, comments and more. Social media channel attached to it 18 months ago.

NLA has a Facebook page, Twitter channel and YouTube channel. NLA posts all of the content – using the corporate brand as the online identity. Use your brand to attract attention and followers – fits with a business model.

Difficulty in serving all our users in any depth, due to their diversity. Its both good and interesting, but can make it difficult for us to deliver content online which is appropriate for a large proportion of our users.

Social media is a free puppy – there is a cost – in generating content, monitoring and responding to users, archiving content, exploring new tools. NLA is investigating tools such as HootSuite to monitor their online social engagement.

More specialist channels, like British Library’s Magnificent Maps blog, Reel Culture, Dinosaur Tracking, From the Catbird Seat, Children’s Literature @ NYPL. Advantage of these is that you can focus in and users are more likely to tune in and engage with their content.

Unfortunately, we are not able to engage with all of our users, regardless of what we do. Our users and their interests are just too varied.

Results of their 12 month trial with social media. Had no resources to invest in social media, so there was no publicity or marketing of these presences. The first thing they did right was setting their aims for Trove’s social media:

To increase use of Trove

To increase the visiblility of Trove

To provide customer service to Trove

To solicit feedback about Trove, in order to improve the service

Getting it wrong was not thinking about which social media channels they should use. They thought they could re-purpose the content for use across different channels. They couldn’t do it easily.

Facebook didn’t work for them – there were some technical issues, but they weren’t able to resources many different feeds. Need to acknowledge that it is a far more interactive presence and requires more work than a broadcast medium like Twitter. So they moved away from Facebook quite quickly.

Twitter worked perfectly for them. Their aim of constantly exposing their content. Were able to use quirky humour. Thought it would be used differently than it was. Rather than linking to blog posts which contained multiple Trove links, they instead linked directly to digitised snippets. Side benefit was a huge growth in media interest in the content shared and in Trove itself.

Under-estimated how quickly and easy it was to communicate to and with their user base. When you treat your user with that sort of respect, you get a return of good will.

When you user has a win using your service, you are more likely to receive a complimentary tweet, than you are to get an email etc.

Twitter presence is not just about getting Twitter followers, but to get people to come into Trove itself.

There is a cost to not operating in this space. If we are not there, we are missing what people are saying about us and missing a chance to get your message out.

Tim Sherratt – Mining the treasures of Trove: new tools and technologies

1913 – the year that Canberra was officially founded. It was also the year before World War 1 began. Showed a word cloud based on articles from Trove which included the phrase “the future”. It included 11,000 articles. To make this job easy, Tim created a Python script which harvests the data in a form which you specify. Instead of 35,000 clicks, it was a handful.

Once the text files were returned, they were cleaned up. He was able to identify consistent OCR errors and bulk correct them. Once done, we combined them into one file and then put the file into Voyant (a text exploration tool). More refining to remove stop words, so that the more significant terms could come to the fore.

There are a number of tools besides Voyant, that enable you to explore text in interesting ways. Mallet will look at large amounts of text and identify themes (clusters). You have to do some work and decide what the clusters relate to. Natural Language Processing Toolkit (python resource) – enabled him to extract the next six words after a given phrase.

None of these are analyses on their own, they are starting points for future research. They are ways of peeking inside the dataset and helping to decide what approach to use. However, it can be rather slow.

How to speed up the process?

Used QueryHarvester which examined how many articles mentioned your search terms, as compared to the total articles for a year. He then used QueryPic to graph and create a html page which you can then add text to. It encourages exploration in a way that the Harvester alone does not. If you then click on the point on the graph, it then retrieves the first twenty articles from Trove. It gives another interface into the depths of Trove.

This channel is starting to be used by other people, including the Airminded blog. You can too – they are all available and free from Wraggelabs Emporium. Check his blog for more on what he is doing and how.

Why is he doing this? The nature of historical research is changing. In the past, we had scarce resources, but with digitisation, our trickle is becoming more like a flood. “nearly every day we are confronted with a new digital historical resources of almost unimaginable size” Dan Cohen (2008). Its even more true now.

Other tools are out there: Mapping Texts.

Researchers need “a methodology for the infinite archive” Bill Turkel (2006). Now that the historical resources are growing, we will be able to do so much more with the data we can harvest. We can start exploring in ways like never before.

Interfaces are just points of contact between us and the data. Interface development will happen everywhere and they will continue to be developed and alternatives created.

Check out the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities.

There are challenges around this material. One is the de-humanisation of data – the danger that we might forget what its about. We need to keep perspective, understand the human story behind the data.

Phillip Minchin – Stacks of fun: games, community, libraries, technology

Asked questions and used A4 coloured paper to get audience feedback. Consensus was that although most didn’t play games a lot, most considered them very important.

Books are very important and have a place in our lives, but are no longer enough.

Collections: lending is suitable for RPG book and for ones that don’t require registration. Also online subscription games. In-house is suitable for board and card games – is changing with advent of 3D printing and generic self-printing game pieces. Curation is suitable for rules-only games, free electronic games and PDF rule-sets. Subscription suitable (but not available) for: some online games, some ebook-based games. Unsuited to libraries, except as a venue: Collectable Card Games.

Gaming is much more common than most people realise. Part of the appeal of gambling is the gaming. There are a surprising number of games clubs around and they get big numbers. Conventions are big and friendly. Melbourne has a club called Cafe Games – something that libraries could be tapping into.

Gaming is a great way to build community. His library is looking at using games to connect two disparate local communities – older affluent and poorer migrants. Games are a good way because they are non-threatening and fun.

Games in the library: for managing teens/rowdies, chess/scrabble clubs, informal/self-organised play, games club (like book clubs), gamers are our people – geeks and libraries are a natural fit – most are heavy library users already, games and community also a natural fit – Herodotus story – read it in full paper.

Benefits – welcoming space, increased inter-patron interaction, more visitors and longer stays.

Drawbacks – increased potential for patron disputes, more stuff to keep track of, noise level management.

Shared spaces – noise has to be OK and games have to be amenable to audiences or new participants. Dedicated spaces – soundproofed, but preferably visible, but need to manage curiousity.

Games days – for specific well-known games, trying new games, BYO games, open games. Tournaments – if the game is sold commercially, the makers may well support you. Self-organising events – BYO games or open gaming events might well spawn these.

 International Gaming Day @ Your Library – First Saturday of November – 3^rd. http://ngd.ala.org/

Will Donovan from Will Donovan and Mark Watson from Design Providence.

 Mobile and social media – what’s all the fuss?

 37 million iPhones sold in the last quarter in 2012. More than 15 billion apps downloaded – 11 billion for Android. 3 billion iPad apps downloaded. Android now has about 50-60% of market, Apple around 30%. End of last year, smart phone sales overtook PC sales – 488 million smart phones sold, compared to 415 PCs.

 Showed Socialnomics video – related to the book of the same name.

 Social media is not about technology, its about relationships, commerce, memories and much, much more. Over ½ of world population is under 30. Social media has overtaken porn as the number 1 Internet activity. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3^rd largest in the world. 50% of mobile traffic in the UK is for Facebook. 69% of parents are friends with their children in social media. $6 billion spent on virtual goods. Wikipedia in print would be 2.25 million pages long and take over a century to read.

www.socialnomics.com

 Social media trends 2012:

• Convergent emergence – mobile and billboards – bringing your services together and across platforms

• Cult of influence – Klout – what influence do you have online?

• Gamification nation – incentivising your users

• Social sharing – getting your reviews and publications out through social media

• Social television – Q&A (ABCTv) – panel involvement via Twitter

• Micro economy – Kickstarter – people funding other people to create new ideas

 Trends for libraries for 2012

• Mobile friendly websites

• Using YouTube for marketing and education

• Using social media to educate

• Google+ usage will increase, but Facebook will still rule

• Create mobile apps for various uses – not the website

• More services via mobile – due to database vendors

• Goodreads and Library Thing will be used by more libraries as tools, reviews and locating

• Adapt more open source programs

• Online gaming for marketing and education

• More use of Google apps

 86% of people are using their mobile devices whilst watching TV.

 Facebook has become bigger than porn, for the first time ever.

 Three trends that change business – Mobile, Social and Cloud Computing. (Forbes) Its personal and its ubiquitous. Its the new world of services.

 If your site is doing bad, maybe its just not engaging the right way.

Paper.li – social newspaper, for a topic or cause, curated and free flowing. Yammer – private social network (started like Twitter, more like Facebook now). Meetup – social network for groups that have events.

Design process:

Design is messy – no hard and fast way – “This is service design thinking”.

From research (uncertainty) to concept (patterns) and prototype (insights), through to design (clarity/focus).

Designers use inductive thinking – they make observations, find patterns, make tentative hypotheses and create theory – as the process to solve a problem or to create a service.

Discover (design, research, methods) – Define (personas, journeys, maps) – Develop (scenarios, role play, story board) – Deliver (document, concept. (Double diamond design process)

Discover – observe, question (surveys and interviews), map

Define – interpret, establish scope, needs, delineate problems

Develop – work though concepts to establish the appropriate action (journey mapping, story boarding etc)

Deliver – document and build

WORKSHOP – My group decided to work on an actual problem. One of our team has a great store of atmospheric and oceanographic data which is underutilised as it isn’t well known outside the university.  We determined that potential users included scientists, corporations, government, educators, students and researchers. These people all required quick and easy access to such data. Our solution to ‘spread’ the word was to create a Wikipedia article on the repository, which would include snippets of data from the database and a YouTube channel which would show videos of how the data was collected and used.  This would help make it more findable through web searches. We also determined to improve SEO on the website and to offer RSS feeds to the data, to make it more findable and more useful to those who could benefit from it. 

How we did this?

Scoping – define your challenge

Ideation and Concepting

Prototyping

Deliver

 Phase 1 – explore the problem, the challenges and the conventions that you are currently in

• what is the problem opportunity

• who are the users (personas)

• what are they trying to achieve (scenarios)

• concept/storyboard/journey

Phase 2 – wireframe – prototype

• test

• amend

• test again

• deliver

Rules of engagement

• yes and…. (build on what the other person said)

• defer judgement (don’t get caught in arguments, move on)

• go for quantity (share what you do)

• one conversation at a time

• encourage wild ideas

• build on the idea of others

• stay focused on the topic

• be visual

Open share what you know:

• what do you know about social media and mobile

• what tools have use used and pros and cons

Brainstorm the services and challenges now:

• what services do you offer

• who are your users/visitors and their needs

• Visitor + Need = Insight

Create a “How might we”problem statement

Many ways to approach new projects. It is important to collaborate. You don’t need to be an expert designer to innovate. Have a content strategy – be a content expert.

Which means I look to other librarians for interesting information, new ideas and to support and find support from others in the profession.

But for most of my colleagues, Twitter has been a waste of time, due to the bad PR it has received in the media, which has focused mainly on how many followers any given celebrity has.  They could not see that Twitter could have any value and the fact that I was on it and had been for some time was probably attributed more to my interest in the technology, than any value I might have been getting from it.

However, in the past few days, I have had two colleagues reconsider that line of thought. One had tried Twitter before and given up on it. But after hearing from a respected Melbourne library speaker, decided to give it another go. She has been more careful about who she chooses to follow and is finding her way slowly. But she is already finding value and will persist.

The other colleague is also seeing its value as a professional tool, so hopefully we will see her on Twitter soon.

And that’s where I think this nth (2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc – whichever it may be) wave of Twitter may come from. People who have a sincere interest in professional development are beginning to recognise what a wonderful tool it can be to aid them in that endeavour. What we may find is that at least initially, they will be followers, rather than participants (which raises all sorts of interesting scenarios, lol), which is very much the blogging model we have seen, where few blog, some more comment and many just read.

The next wave, might well then be those who finally realise the importance of personal professional development and look for something to help them with that process.

Where do you fit in my supposed waves? Are you finding the same situation amongst your colleagues, or is this just a localised phenomena.

Part of my birthday being a good day was as a result of all the birthday greetings I got, both through Twitter and Facebook. Now Facebook is easier, because it has the birthday calendar, but on Twitter you have to know its the persons birthday.  Well once the news got out, I got multiple greetings from both sources and yes it did make me feel good.

But initially, I got online early and there was nothing waiting for me. No Facebook greetings etc. And that’s what got me thinking about social esteem and social networking. How would I feel if I went through the day and got no greetings from any of my friends on either Facebook or Twitter? What about if I only got them on one and not the other?  What if it was on Twitter, but not on Facebook – where there is the birthday calendar? What would that do to my confidence?

It wouldn’t be the end of the world if it did happen to me, as I have a pretty healthy self-esteem, but having said that, receiving those greetings did help boost my day that little bit extra, so I could imagine that not getting them would put a dint in the confidence.

Taking that a step further, its not just about birthday greetings. You like to know and be acknowledged, by a like or a comment, even in the everyday things you put up on social networking sites. It just lets you know that what you have said has been taken in and caused a response in another person. I guess doing so is kind of like reaching out and touching someone in the physical world.

It makes it easier to understand then, how awful it can be for people, when they are attacked through these sites, or ignored, or bullied, or any other number of depressing things that humans are capable of, even online. I have friends who have given up on Facebook for just that reason. As we all know, people can be terrible, even online and even if they’re not anonymous.

The good news is that those situations are uncommon.

I can’t necessarily stop those awful things from happening, but I can at least imagine how the person at the other end of the internet connection will feel and try to acknowledge and respond, to let them know that someone hears and someone cares enough to take that moment to do something, even if it just to like.

Last year I was in an Acting Branch Manager role, early days, so I had something to talk about pretty much every day. This year I am back to my old job, so once I had committed to doing this, I had to start thinking about what I would blog about. Fortunately, I have had inspiration from many sources, so I have enough topics for a week or so, after that, we’ll see.

I don’t know about you, but just as I have many different faces in the physical world (wife, mother, librarian, church secretary, community group library coordinator, volunteer school book coverer, dog owner, cats owner, Auskick parent, etc, etc), I have now developed (although it took a few years) a few different online lives too.

What got me thinking about this was a chat a had with a friend on an online games site I frequent. This lady lives in the US, we met on this site and all we do is play scrabble against each other and chat. I mentioned something in one of these chats and she was surprised, as in all the time we had been talking online, she hadn’t know this about me. (and no, its nothing scandalous )

So I started thinking about how I segment my online life – I am on Facebook with a wide range of personal and professional friends and colleagues and on Twitter with mostly professional friends and colleagues. But then I also frequent two games sites, a couple of fan fic sites, a community group forum and that’s about it (light on I know, compared to many others).

And I realised, that the online is just a digital version of my physical life. Just as I know and interact with many people in the physical world, who only know me at the point at which we interact and around the subject of that interaction, the same occurs in the digital. And I pondered, is this a good or bad thing – both physically and digitally? Do I want people to know me more in either world, or am I OK with the very narrow picture they have of me. Am I happy with the narrow picture I have of them? Should the digital world be different to the physical, or is it really, as I am finding, just an extension of it.

For me, I think I am mostly happy with my lines of separation. As time develops, the boundaries may expand (or contract) with different people, but I think there is value in some level of anonymity in areas in which you are not deeply immersed or committed. What do you think? Should it be different in some way?

Stephen Abram – The future: Frankenbooks, social collaboration and learning on steroids

We have right on our side, we know that  learning matters.

Sweet Mona Lisa smile with bubble saying Moron – over the heads of people who say that libraries are no longer needed. If you confuse having libraries with having know-how then you are mistaken. Know how counts, not know that. Its the know how that matters, the professional skills. As content becomes more accessible, we are drowning people in know that.

We all start with Google, because it does a great job at who, what, where, when. It sucks at how and why. Drug info online is provided by drug companies – if even its not their website.  Should we be happy with only that information being acceptable?

We are not a scalable solution for small questions. Google answers more questions in one day than all the librarians do in 25 years.

We only get so many once in a lifetime chances to do great things. Internet and we did. Mobile and social are our opportunities.  Biggest negotiations are in copyright – worldwide, telling us what we can do with information and taking away rights that we already have.

Is it the end of libraries as we know them? Hope so, at least the public perception of us as big warehouses. Google adjusts their results if it comes through a campus (geo-tagging), so the results reach that lucrative market. How much money do we make out of our searching?

We need to be defending the right to read, not the book. Defending toxic glue, human cells etc – its the memory that it evokes, not the smell itself. Can’t defend libraries over librarians, should be about the community spaces.

What will the roles be for libraries and librarians?

Has been a lot of change in the early part of the century, in the 20s and 30s. We had an infrastructure shift in the last 20 years, but it wasn’t a major change, that is coming.

As we move forward, we don’t know what the right answer is. We don’t know what learning is going to do, but we know that humans will be involved and the best way is to PLAY. Watching just doesn’t work. For those librarians who don’t connect on social networks, you are missing out on what is happening with your major market. Libraries are social institutions are should be on social networks. By not being there, we are not connecting with our clients, we are choosing to be transactional rather than transformational.

So what is changing – everything! We are connected to the world. We have to be smarter, nimble and more connected. The tools available now can make this happen.

Librarians are being the glue in communities of practice in very innovative areas including health and technology. Feeding in information as it is needed. We need to be in the spaces and being the glue – delivering the content at point of need.

School libraries are the best improver of school test scores, apart from parents reading to their child.  (25%) School/public library partnerships increase score by 5%+.  Libraries and information content and technology leadership are critical to Higher Ed.

Its not about what you find, librarians are about understanding what you find when you search.

Communities with libraries as an investment receive very high ROI – average 650%.

Most library content is organised like grocery stores – both in our physical and virtual spaces. How do libraries package our content in ways that our users want. Its getting harder to separate out content and making it easily findable for those who want it.

Librarians play a vital role in building the critical connections between information, knowledge and learning. There are 7 different learning styles – we need to be presenting our content in those different styles. We are text based, which isn’t even the most common learning style.

The elephant in the room is how do we deal with the depth of people and their styles. Do our collections support how they take in content.

Need to be collaborating across institutions, not competing against them.

Strategy is a choice. Emboldened librarians are the key – try things out with little projects.

The Internet and technology have now progressed to their infancy – they are toddlers.  We need to find our voice.

Should we be letting our technology dictate what we can or can’t access via our devices? We are about freedom to read – but that should mean freedom to read whatever we want!

We should be talking to the people we are uncomfortable with in our communities – its from them that we will learn the most. We are very comfortable talking to people who are similar to us. You may find that these are your best market.
If we want to serve all, its not just about reading, we need to support the culture, the people and their learning styles, not just their reading habits alone.

People are changing – IQ is up overall, increased educational attainment, playing video games improves brain development, device proliferation, sectors are very tech dominated, reading is up, library use up particularly due to e-books, ebook sales higher than print.

Need to be aware of eye movements- millennials are O frame, gen Xers are F frame. Need to ensure that our services are meeting the needs of our users, not our own needs.

Can libraries keep up with change? Formats have died before and we can deal with the death of books as we have survived the death of other formats.

Re-intermediation – how do we put librarians back into the space. Trust yourself to make a difference and have an impact. Don’t roll over and play dead – challenge false assumptions.

Two kinds of librarians – those who just watch and those who get involved. If we are to survive, we need to be the latter. We need to talk about our value, communicate better, advocate for ourselves and our users, market better.

The power of libraries is not information, it’s clarification. It is the value we deliver.

Have great library projects, but then we take the personality out of it – Inside a dog is an exception.
(only librarians will argue over spine labels rather than the content of a book)

Questions:
We need social connections which are both deep and superficial, to make changes in our communities.  So we need things like both Twitter and Facebook.

Social media @ Deakin – Kat Clancy
The key to using Twitter is following the right people. @sabram is a good person to follow. There are plenty of librarians to follow and many more people depending on your interests.

Yammer – has been used by Deakin for the last 2 years, but only seeing good results in the last few months, with a big take-up by library staff. Yammer is for private communication within an organisation or between pre-designated groups. Its Enterprise social software which enables communities – allows external groups to connect as well, if  you choose.

Similar to a forum, but easier to use. Can tag topics, include attachments, social bookmarking, integrates with Twitter or reply using email or SMS and apps on various devices, can be customised and has security features.
Deakin using Yammer to share info within work groups – between different areas of university – between students and alumni, problem solving, having questions answered, networking, events, polls, staff focus.

Deakin has Facebook page rather than group, more functionality, better promotion and more public. Got more likes when advertised on their website. Have users posting to their page.

Dealing with social media – you will receive negative feedback – deal with them as you would normally, you may have to deal with inappropriate comments and engage. Don’t have to be formal, works better if you are casual.

Dos and Don’ts for social media:

• Do be informative – tell what you are about
• Don’t be a parrot – will lose followers doing this
• Do make a tradition – eg. follow Friday, Wednesday resource of the week
• Don’t neglect replies – engage with your users, don’t be there just to be there
• Do call for action – use ‘like this status” – it gets you great feedback
• Don’t rely on text alone – photos are a great tool
• Do have a crisis plan – be ready for negative and inappropriate comments
• Don’t be impolite – commonsense, same as dealing with user in person or on phone

www.facebook.com/deakinlibrary
@deakinlibrary

Questions:
How much time do you spend monitoring and answering questions?
Kat checking twitter when checking her own account. Facebook is getting checked first in the morning, then 2 – 3 times during the day. Working on getting people who can answer the questions, there on social networks, so that it becomes part of their workflow. Are working on a social media policy at present. Getting a question a day during peak times, around 3 a week other times.

Aggregation services?
They monitor mentions of Deakin Library as twitterers won’t always put the @ tag in their tweets. Tweet Deck is the aggregator she uses.  It enables her to check tweets, mentions, direct messages and searches in one screen. Hoot Suite is an aggregator which includes both Facebook and Twitter.

How often do you tweet?
Most often post things which link to a news item.  Have put up fun things, like Old Spice ad library adaptation and some things about the University too. Uni has presences now, but is very formal. Need to put personality into what you do in social media.

Deakin’s e-book device loan trial – Sarah Sherman
E-books were useful for their users because they were available immediately, 24/7 access, portable. For the library, immediate access, less space, cheaper etc. Big growth in e-book content in the last 8 years.  Now have 125,127 e-books.

Expect tipping point from print to e will be in the next year or so.

Acquiring e-books via patron driven purchasing model (EBL), subscription to packages, publisher packages, individual title purchases, gratis (mainly government publications).

e works for Deakin, as it allows equity of access and flexible learning, have great support and they can trial new resources.  But more could be done…..

2010 – what did they know about students mobile technology use?  No iPads, netbooks and smart phones increasingly popular.

Educause study of undergraduate students and information technology 2010. Laptop is already highest percentage, with Internet capable handheld device more popular than desktop computers.

Kept all this in mind when looking at which e-reader to buy. Pre-iPad, so considering their requirements, including price, existing market share, content available (free and paid), connectivity, battery life and general usability.

Originally tried Iliad, Eco reader and Kindle.  FIrst has gone out of business now, Eco not large market share, so Kindle was chosen.

Project brief – considered: content, how many, size, security, promotion and license issues.  Bought 15 devices of varying sizes, split between 4 campuses. Bought cases from store and placed 3 fiction and 3 non-fiction titles on each.  Included conditions of use, FAQ, removed charging cord. Amazon approved use, as long as individual content was bought for each device.

Benefits of pilot – gaterhing information on the scholarly application of it, raise awareness of e-reader technology, promote the library as a leader in new technology/change/ideas, provide information to the Uni community on these devices.

Mostly positive response to the trial. Some issues included: not including cable so users couldn’t download more content, no holds allowed on the devices, unfulfilled fear that users would register the devices to their own Amazon account – didn’t happen.

General feedback – more textbooks – just weren’t available, choice of content – wanted more – can now email their team once they have the Kindle and suggest for purchase, colour – e-Ink is easier on eyes for sustained reading, so not available, touch screen – all want to pinch, drag and drop.

Issues with lending technology included: laptops or net books are possible, check your applications (some licences restrict it so cant lend device with software loaded on it), they can be useful even if you can”t lend them – testing, tech zone for play. What are the devices offering – tools, content, portability, productivity, iPads for mobile/roving reference, iPad touch for shelvers who work night shifts – for quick ref help, provide flexibility and choice for our users.
Other things to think about? Who will look after the devices – charging batteries, setting up  wireless etc. Who will – pay for apps and connectivity, administer authentication and subscription logins, manage content. Who provides training, instructions in best use, repair and replace and the list goes on.

Amazon sold more ebooks than print in 2010. Publishers ebook policies will affect use – loans between devices, loans from libraries etc are all in flux.

Have tried some more devices – Cybook (loaned from vendor) wouldn’t sync with their laptops and wouldn’t bookmark or highlight. Also looking at Kobo, which is slow and doesn’t have a dictionary.Now looking at tablet devices including the Handii tablet – heated up too much and short battery life, hard to read, Samsung Galaxy Tab (runs on Android) – limited apps and no e-Ink, iPad – no eInk and have to buy the quality eBook apps and just a bit too big. (want something between iPad and Galaxy Tab). More new devices coming out – Cisco Cius, BeBook Neo, Microsoft may be working on something, Kno. Didn’t try out Nook.

Ideal e-device:

• not locked to a single source
• able to handle multiple formats
• multi-functional
• web-enabled
• wireless
• run multiple programs
• colour and touch screen
• long battery life
• lightweight

Til that happens its about the Apps. There are apps for Kobo, Kindle, Sony, Nook, Martview, Borders and Stanza.
They may still go down the Netbook/Laptop path in the meantime.

Showed the PushPopPress ebook demo that has been getting a lot of attention lately: check it out at http://www.pushpoppress.com/

Future long term: ebooks in the cloud.
Showed Google e-books promo -http://youtu.be/ZKEaypYJbb4. Business model not out yet, but will be using HTML 5 enalbing them to use video. They have already signed up top 400,000 publishers worldwide.

Questions:
iDevices used by staff ARE heavily secured so that they have the same standard operating environment – no customising by library staff allowed.

Each device has its own Kindle account. Content is purchased using a university credit card for the Kindle and purchase orders for the iPad.

Came across a few geographic restrictions on the Kindle.

e-Paper, print disappears in temperatures under 30 degrees. (Steve Abram)

Exploring ways to spread OSS through public libraries – Open Source Workshop – Camilo Jorquera
Camilo was wanting to make open source more accessible to the public . Ideas included: software kiosk, preloaded USB sticks (which could be plugged into and run on any computer), online links to resources – eg forums, support networks etc, using it!, having Linux computers and having OSS installed.

Ask yourself – seems strange that libarires access to and don’t provide these free tools to the public. By not doing so, it contributes to the digital divide, so access, distribution and educating the public on quality and freely available software.

OSS is less about programming and more a philosophical approach to community driven and supported software.

Obstacles to use are restrictions put in place by IT departments, in trying to establish a Standard Operating Environment (SOE). Great for IT, not for a public requirements point of view. What should our focus be?
Support of software is an issue – IT depts know infrastructure well, but not software specialists. It really isn’t an IT issue, so expertise is not generally easily available.

A new approach – a better way. Camilo created a USB of open source portable content containing a wide range of excellent tools. They don’t affect the SOE as they are running off the USB.

He then handed out a USB drive with that software for us to try out and then keep! Device does an auto open and uses Portable Apps (portableapps.com) to access the menu. Some of the apps were added by Camilo, but many are available as is from Portable Apps. These are designed for PC, not portable devices – its the software thats portable.

Simon Goodrich – Portable – Future trends in technology
Much of Simon’s talk was the same as was given at the Yarra Plenty unconference – check out my report from that event.

Games applications can influence companies. Australian government is looking to get game developers to work with businesses on interactivity – ISIS project (http://cci.edu.au/post/the-interactive-skills-integration-scheme-isis)

Half of Australians now access the mobile internet.

SMS was initially only used to get a message to someone when they weren’t answering their phone.

Color – new service – take pictures together – has apps for iPhone and Android etc. Demo at http://www.color.com/

60% of Australians have smart phones – the other 40% might be our clients wanting to learn about these technologies.

Fast growing apps:
Instagram – growing faster than Facebook – share photos
Foodspotting – food guide, not a restaurant guide
Sound tracking – what are you listening to
They all use geo-location.

5 Pillars of social media

1. Innovation is key
2. Brand web literacy
3. Increased engagement
4. Next generation audience of fans, followers and subscribers in social media
5. Mobile is here

Practical ideas right now:
Install recording booths in library for users to come and record their recollections of the local area and/or times and events.

Scanning parties at the library – come in and scan your photos – build a local history of the area – geotag it.

Book reviews – encourage users to contribute to your reviews – using the “do you want fries with that” concept.

I also am amazed at learning things about my blog and other library blogs from an outside perspective. There is no-one better at doing this (or actually doing it all to any level), than Walt Crawford.

Uploaded to Flickr on 13th May 2006, by Alpha Six, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

Walt has written books on library blogs and their metrics (amongst other things) and pulled some data out for a recent issue of Cites and Insights (which is always worth a read).  Here’s some highlights I found intriguing:

• Fewer new library blogs and fewer library blogs in general (is the age of the blog over, or is it just the hype that has died?)
• Fewer posts on those blogs
• Longer posts
• Fewer comments

My response to these?

• Fewer new library blogs – reached critical mass, maybe we have enough librarians talking about all the different areas of librarianship
• Fewer library blogs – they were taken up with fervour a few years back, but new things have happened (like Twitter) and some people may have said all they have to say, so have moved on
• Longer posts – maybe becoming more about information than about conversation?
• Fewer comments – I think this is because the conversation has moved away from blogs to Twitter and other social networking sites

Having said that, I still believe in the value of library blogs – you only need to look at my feed reader to see that is true.  What do you think?

And of course as usual, as I was pondering before writing this post, something else related appears. Walt is doing more research and is looking for library blogs he may have missed. Check out his post Liblogs: what am I missing? to ensure either yours or the ones you read are included.

This research is valuable and important, so please support it in any way you can.

Thanks!

Blog Workshop – Chris Garrett
Handed out a mind map to give some tips on how your blog could be improved. He then offered to critique some of the attendees blogs. The following is the feedback he gave.

goodlife zen.com – good start having a dot.com address. Fresh look, nice clean layout. Eyes are drawn to the photo – personalises it and connects with people. Layout is good to the content – content must be first. Subscribe options should be at the top and be as simple as possible – top right is usually best – above the fold. Make it work at 800 by 600 but make it look good at 1024 and above.
Subscribe could conjure payment ideals – try to work free/join into it. Tell them how and why to subscribe to your blog at the end of EVERY SINGLE POST. Chris added his email signup up box into his theme, so it appears automatically at the bottom of each post. Add related posts links to get people interested in more content.  RSS footer – type plugins available for Word Press (and others?), usually used for copyright but can put your email form in. Good also to put into the content, but gets tired if you do it all the time. Do it before the comments – regular readers will just scroll past it.

Have a call to action for your comments – edit your theme so it says, leave a comment now, no. of comments – add yours now. DISQUS – helps to organise comments into threads, can help make your comments viral – they then can be posted to social networking sites. Reply to  comments – not just the key ones – its a relationship builder. Have a public comment policy – gives you basis on which to edit or delete comments – my house, my rules.

blog.iqmatrix.com – having a blog separate to your main domain could be good if you are security conscious, but if you link to the main site, then www.domain.com/blog would be better as this is where both search engines and users would expect it to be. Need to be aware of floating footers – may link to ads or original coder – be wary. Floating bubbles can be annoying – but will work better if you use a short delay before it comes up. Can get popups when you scroll over heading, such as comments. Image was great but needed some context – never overestimate the intelligence of your readers. Be careful of how you use the term blog – Latest Blog Articles may be better as Latest Articles.

Open Panel with Darren, Chris, Yaro, Collis and Pip.
Darren has a subscribe page – RSS, email to RSS and newsletter(s) with a short explanation of each.

Introduced a forum when they had 1000 daily visitors. (Darren)
There are personality based niche blogs and then niche information blogs. (Yaro)

Multiple blogs – have an editor for each one – they keep track of direction and management etc, under broader guidelines. (Collis)

Personality, authenticity, sincerity can drive a non-profit blog – you can’t buy that. (Pip)

Persuasive selling techniques not incorporated deliberately into sales pages – more passive than subjective, more natural as it comes from him personally as he learns from other examples. You can utilise both, as long as you are not compromising your personal standards and still meets the demands of your brand. (Yaro)

So that’s the day’s labours but not the day’s results. I will be looking at incorporating many of the things I learnt here in any or all the blogs I am involved in, including this one, so stay tuned!

Building Community on your blog – Darren Rowse

Building community is about good relationships, using skills which can be transferred from the real world.

Why build community on your blog? Blogs can be about providing information, but they can take on a life of their own and communities do form.  Community makes your site:

• more useful (comments add to the content and these can be used create their own content based on this, but located elsewhere);
• social proof makes it easier to promote your blog (comments, members, subscribers etc);
• increased page views (in community areas rather than blog areas); makes it more valuable to sell;
• more attractive to advertisers;
• your community becomes an advocate (for you);
• user generated content.

How to build community:

• be the community you want to have – readers will take your lead;
• invite interaction – they respond to invitations and questions – run polls, surveys etc – if no comments, answer yourself or get someone you know to answer;
• start with your comments section, build an off-blog community elsewhere (eg. Flickr, Facebook etc);
• add a community area (forum);
• use social media to reinforce and build community, write in a personal and engaging tone;
• use personal mediums (photos/video), use ‘you’ and we – write to people – direct language – we = our site;
• reader centred posts – start with the reader;
• offer additional ways to join or become a member;
• social proof – highlight interaction/community/numbers to your community;
• identify natural leaders – give jobs, train them, pay them;
• give people space to play (off topic interactions);
• teach the wisdom of the crowd to your community;
• invite reader generated content;
• set homework/projects – send them away to do something on their own and then report back;
• give readers a chance to show off;
• involve readers in decisions and change – can work for you or against you (survey, features they want etc);
• be accessible.

Dealing with trolls: think about policies and standards before you need them; model good community; reward good behaviour; outline roles of moderators carefully and talk about policies, values and procedures; marginalise trolls; allow community to help you police; be firm, polite and calm with trouble makers.

How to get more comments: use your own comments section, followup commenters, ask questions, be open ended, invite questions, discussion posts, controversy/debate, highlight hot conversations make space for self promotion, ask for advice/opinions/examples/stories. (use a more button to take them to full post and comments, rather than hoping they will go to comments)

Interview with Pip from Meet me at Mike’s (craft/lifestyle blog)

Blogs are a healthy tool to help you document your interests or just your life. It’s OK to write about the human aspect, your good stuff as well as when you muck it up. Run projects through the blog, which are to benefit your community or the wider community. Retain your core values throughout. Interact on lots of different platforms – so that you can reach people and make it easier for people to reach you – don’t talk about just your own stuff, also talk about what they are interested in. Its about them as well as about you.

What she would have done differently? Label your posts properly, categorise them clearly so they readers can find them; use comment moderation or comments systems like DISQUS to protect yourself from nasty comments.

Blog monetization – Yaro Starak
It is not just about making money directly from your blog, but also because of it. 20% effort can achieve 80% results.  Yaro told us how he turned his blog  – Entrepreneurs Journey, into bucks.

Aim to get a lot of results from the least effort – 80/20 rule in general, but to begin with, blogs take a lot of effort to establish.

Ways to make money directly from blogs: advertising income, affiliate income and selling products.

Yaro sold his own advertising, as AdSense didn’t work for him. He charged a monthly rate, used a Paypal account and had different options for advertising. Uses OpenX to manage his banners and they are rotated through. Its all automated.

Affiliate income – wrote a review on a book about Google AdWords. Didn’t work initially, but then managed a sale and now earns a large part of his income through reviews. His most important move was to add an email newsletter to his blog – this made the biggest difference to his income stream. Combine email with blog posts to make the most money.

Blog Mastermind – his first online course product.  Wrote a paper on the topic, which he gave away as a free sample as a lead in to the product and has increased his readership dramatically.

All this helps you to create solid, multiple income streams and establishes you as an authority in blogging and money making. Get a product out as soon as you can.

Did some private coaching recently, only because it gave him an opportunity to investigate his market and to get some case studies. It breaks his 80/20 rule, but it gave him insight he couldn’t otherwise get. He enjoys it, but it is not the best way to leverage his time.

Panel: Yaro, Darren and Chris (Chrisg.com)
Yaro gave a rough estimate of $1 income per unique individual page view per day. Can also vary your prices according to demand. Darren said that he has negotiated with advertisers, based on what they were wanting to spend. Can also be involved in a banner networks and start with getting what the market will pay, then when you have proven performance, you can negotiate a higher price.

90% of geeks will use AdBlock, but they aren’t a big issue outside the geeks.

Email subscriptions going down? Need to have your subscribers waiting in anticipation of what’s in the email, so that they will be waiting for it. Use a commercial product for newsletter creation and subscription means. Options are AWeber, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact and others. Can get content from RSS feed or encode the content yourself.

Affiliate products – different for every industry. Yaro focuses on the ones he needs to use in this day and time.  He uses it and then does his review and recommendations – need to have some negatives otherwise people don’t quite believe it.  Use Clip Bank to get help on finding programs.  If there is not an affiliate program, you can approach the producers to establish one or something similar. Amazon runs an affiliate program and there are many more out there. Do a search on cost per action or lead generation. Be honest about making money – people will appreciate that. Legally required in US, but not in Oz yet – should disclose, because you want to honour the trust that has been place in you by your readers. Reciprocity works here too.

AIDA – attraction, interest, desire, action. Provide proof, answer objections. Think about where your traffic is coming from and then target an offer towards them (specificity). Not just about conversion rates, you need to see the action all the way through. What is the refund rate etc.

Collis Ta-eed – Case Study

Blogging industry been around 6 or 7 years, but there are still a lot of opportunities. How do you identify them? Wrote a post about freelancing, which gave him more hits than the rest of his blog posts combined. Started http://freelanceswitch.com/ – within 2 weeks he had 3000 readers – 10 times what he had on his previous blog. Had written a series of tutorials on PhotoShop which he published on a blog, which also took off and has now spun off into a new series of blogs which also provide tutorials on different topics. Another blog came out of a post which ended up on top of the Google search results for Mac Apps.

Not all opportunities are the same. Not everything they did worked. Freelance Switch worked but Work which aimed at office workers is just trudging alone. PSD/Net great success but Audio has been growing Ok and not the runaway success that its inspiration was. Mac Apps spawned Web Apps which hasn’t really moved, iyet Phone Apps which came later has worked much better in a shorter time.

Some blogs rush straight off the ground. Others are a hard slog, traffic, revenue, audience etc. No difference in the inputs, so need to figure out how to get it right.

Techniques to get it right:

• Variations on popular – imitate but with a twist, can be successful if you get in early-ish, are good and have a sufficiently different angle;
• Using empirical results – search rankings, popularity of posts (not just on your own blog), Adsense testing, any method where you gauge the popularity of a niche in an analytical way;
• problems & passion – doing what you love Or solving your own problem, assumes that there are others out there like you (and there probably are);
• using trends – pick where the market is going and bet on it, great example – Twitip! Great for technology but applicable for other areas too.

Is it really an opportunity? Not always. To find out, try some competitive analysis, empirical analysis, test the waters.

Capitalising on opportunities: Move quickly – web moves first and it takes time to gain momentum so you need to start sooner rather than later. Don’t be afraid to change – you have to give something a good solid go and back yourself but if its  not working then sometimes you have to pull the plug and concentrate on a different opportunity.

Opportunity is only the beginning: you still need to execute well, you need to create good content, you need to be consistent, you have to be better than your competitors.

So that’s it until about mid afternoon on Monday. I will post the last of my notes in a third blog post tomorrow.

Although parts of the day were focused on the money making side of blogging and I was surrounded by business focused bloggers, I still got a lot out of it, even from those monetizing sections. I ended up taking 7 pages of notes, so instead of inflicting them all on you in one go, I will break them up into parts.

Creating Killer Content – Chris Garrett

Worked on Problogger book with Darren Rowse. In from UK. What brings them together is content.

Its one of the pillars of blogging, but it is also the key pillar. If you don’t have content, you don’t have anything to blog with.

It’s not about making cash, it’s about long term value – to have this you have to have killer content.

First: common sense is seldom, common practice. Are you doing this? Are your peers? Could you do better at this? Keep your edge or catch up by doing this.

What is killer content?  Leads to attraction, retention, conversion and referral. Many stop at the attention grabbing. Attention is only the first step and its a cycle. Blog can plateau. Need to keep existing people happy, whilst also getting new people in.

You are only as good as your last article. Even if you have consistently done great content. If you have killer content it becomes viral. Word of mouth is the best advertisement you can get.

Why create it? It puts your blog on the map – a must-have resource. Must be something that they subscribe to. You establish yourself as the go to person in your niche.

Do you know your prospect? Do you know your niche? Do you know your positioning?  Have to stand out and for a good reason. What are you giving to people that nobody else does. You have to be different, but with value.

Success factors: be remarkable (people talk about it), more useful, in more depth, better researched, attractively presented, magnetic headlines, easy to grasp, friendly URL, WIIFM (whats in it for me – for your reader), minimum hype, prominent placement – being where people are going to be and no barriers – don’t make them jump through hoops, just give them the content and explain how they can share it (ie. Creative Commons badges etc). Never say you’re an expert, let others say that for you – if you say it, all the barriers go up.

Compelling content types: your biggest tips, big vision, guides/how to/tutorials, FAQs, Story with a message, research and results, jargon buster, product database, case studies, resource round-up.

Generating Ideas: Yahoo Answers etc – find out what questions people are asking and answer them. Once you get some followers, people will ask questions. Get their permission to answer the question on your blog.

Blog this! Write about what you know or your journey about learning what you want to know. But it also has to intersect with what people want to know (rather than what they need). If it doesn’t, you won’t find an audience. Add proof that you know people want to know it. Back up that you know what you are talking about with your proof – statistics and social verification.

Emotional motivators – towards or away from people – towards is goal oriented, away is worry etc – need to know your audience and blog accordingly. Past, present, future; they live on these clocks – understand where they are coming from.  What if, how to…..; information…. action – people need results from your information.

Headlines – need to get people to read your information. Need to look at the reason they are looking – risk or reward. Need to have keywords that people are seeking.
10 proven formulas for blog posts:

• DO you make these mistakes?
• The secrets of ………..?
• What …….. can teach us about ……….?
• Everything you know about is ………. wrong.
• How ………… made ……….. and you can too.
• If you …………. you can …………..
• Finally, no more ………….
• At last! …………….
• Learn how millions of…..
• How to get more/better/cheaper………….

Borrow Authority – if you don’t know the information yourself, ask an authority and get permission to re-use the content. It gives you more authority because you know people who are recognised authorities.

Jedi Mind tricks (marketing) – audience, relationships, authority, proof, story, conversation, reciprocity, polarity, commitment, consistency.

Multimedia is very persuasive and easy to get out – can make it easy to go viral. It makes you stand out (most bloggers go with text) and is easy to share.

Re-purpose your content – bundle it into a container, make videos around it, take the audio and make it into a podcast, create an e-book from the multimedia you create. Leverage it to get more traction from it. You can even outsource the re-purposing.

Case Study – Chrisg.com – 41 blog success tips —– includes benefit and proof. Has an image that catches the eye. Problogger – becoming a problogger – rags to riches story – underlying message is that you can too.  Copyblogger – on dying, mothers and fighting for your ideas – story with a message.

Mistakes in creating content: – writing purely for search – filler content (just to fill a space) – recycling ideas (update, not copy and paste or link) – Echo chamber (we all agree) – Poking the Hornets nest.

Finding Readers – Darren Rowse
What was your biggest day of traffic and how did it happen? (go and check it out for your blog – can learn so much from this alone)

Which Readers? What type of people do you want to read your blog? Knowing who, informs your content strategy, your promotional strategy, community strategy and monetisation strategy.

Develop reader profiles: create a typical scenario of who would read your site – demographics, dreams, why they would read your blog, needs, challenges, how they use the web, financial situation – all completely made up – but it gives you a starting point. Profiles will evolve and need to be updated. They inform your content and how you promote your site. If you don’t know who reads your blog then how can you find them? If you have a profile in mind, it helps you to personalise the content to that particular profile.

Principles of finding readers:

• choose popular topics for your blog and posts (google trends, market samurai);
• build something worth being found;
• get off your blog – build a home base – then interact on outposts on the web – outposts depend on who your readers are – eg Twitter, Flickr
• build anticipation – give readers a reason to subscribe – a reason to stick around;
• start with the readers you have – you can potentially reach more through the ones you have;
• build a sticky blog – engross them so much that they don’t want to leave (sneeze pages – gets people deeper into your blog, into the things that interest them);
• content event (results of surveys or polls and more, seasonal stuff etc) – look at what your peers are doing, social bookmarking and networking are talking about in your niche and make the most of it;
• use familiar technologies for subscribing – email;
• persist – momentum does grow and it does get easier;
• promote…… but not too much. Survey your readers – find out what they want to know about and what other sites they use.

Lifehacker – suggest a link/topic. Get them to write about something you think their readers should know about.

Blog posts on themes or greatest hits……

Techniques for finding readers:

• guest posting, social media sites, you tube, seo, forums,
• pitch other bloggers,
• leverage other online and offline presences
• participate in other memes and projects of others,
• blogging/web communities, competitions and awards,
• speaking at events and workshops online/offline.
• Blogging alliances,
• present workshops,
• develop reports/whitepapers,
• incentivise subscriptions,
• interview someone/be interviewed,
• comment on others blogs (make an impression),
• comment on readers blogs,
• promote posts or landing pages – not just your blog,
• advertise,
• submit stories to media/press releases,
• anticipate big events,
• press releases.

Forums still have value, particularly in finding readers – you can help those there with your expertise, build your reputation and gain exposure for your blog.

Find a community that helps you to promote and improve your own blog.

Check your public library for training opportunities on things like public speaking, choosing cameras etc.

Getting readers to subscribers – depends on your readers – add a subscribe link to end of each post and if not used too much, in content links.  Sidebar links don’t work that well.

That took us to morning tea – will post the next stage in Part Two – coming soon!