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Running a Gaming Program

When you Can’t Tell the Difference Between an Xbox and a Game Cube - Josh Weiland, and Maryann Mori

Why conduct a gaming program? How will it happen?  What equipment will be needed?  Where will I go with this program?First, there was 0 budget and no knowledge (at the Evansville library).

Search for answers:  Gaming magazines (Game Pro and EGM are the most popular; Tips & Tricks was recommended by teens); Game books:  Gaming & Libraries by Jenny Levine, Gamers in the Library - heavy on tournaments, rather than open play; Game On! by Beth Galloway.  Web sites:  try Google:  teen gaming library; IGN.com; joystiq.com; cheapassgamer.com (online gamer forum).

Question others: try local gaming stores; talk to tech staff, or younger people (e.g., shelvers) at the library (you might find gamers in the library); talk to other libraries that have conduced gaming programs; talk to teens.  Also ask about room requirements (e.g., closed space to contain noise, lots of electrical outlets), equipment needs (especially display devices, like large screen and projectors), video and sound connectors.

Game considerations (what types of games will you allow - check the ESRB Ratings - www.esrb.org).  Teens do like E rated games (Everyone) because they are retro.Recommended games:  Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kat?, guitar hero II, Karaoke revolution, Dance Dance Revolution.Collaborative possibilities:  stores? (evaluate new games, prizes?); other libraries (distributed hosting of game programs); within the library.  Use what you’ve got:  borrow, if you don’t have the equipment.  A basic setup is only about $70.  If teens are bringing in equipment, have sticky labels where they can write their names on it, to avoid confusion.  If the programming is successful, bring the numbers and benefits to sponsors to buy equipment (like Friends’ group).

Equipment:  next-gen vs. current gen.  Biggest consideration is cost.  Next-gen systems run $250+.  There is also the cost of accessories (e.g., multiple controllers) $50-$60 per controller for next-gen games.  Also consider types of games available. 

Anticipate the big day:  (advanced planning) - test everything to make sure it works, and works with everything else; label everything; get advertising out early; establish rules and operating guidelines (play fairly, be nice, share your toys); have registration? (depends on how many you expect to come); remind people involved (including participants); plan whether/what  refreshments (have at least bottles of water - label with names)

Relax:  don’t try to do everything yourself, let teens help with the work; join in the fun;  think about what you might need with you in the room, such as personal things; keep copies of the guidelines/rules;  if it is a big room, have a microphone to make announcements (like for switch times)

Evaluate and expand:  get input from attendees before they leave; consult with other teens; consider other dates/times (Saturday afternoons seem to work well); consider tournaments (once you are comfortable with open play); get other library systems or branches involved.  Remember why you are doing this:  teens are getting involved in the library, attending other programs, volunteering.

technorati tags:IL2007

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Do You Need a Videographer? - Nick Baker

Showed video of ALA Midwinter conference (from a “what do librarians do at a conference” perspective)

(filmed at the Seattle ALA midwinter conference in 2007)

Reference and web services librarian.

Does your library need a video expert on staff?

Can you use YouTube to market to users?

What are some tips and tricks for making a library video?

Involvement began with a digital storytelling workshop.  Main focus of the workshop was on crafting a narrative, then adding photos and sound. The narrative aspect is the most important aspect of a good video. 

Already had experience using a time line editor like iMovie and audacity.

Also had taken media classes in college.

First video was for library orientation:  perceived a need, wanted to connect with incoming, wired students.  Worked with instruction librarian to condense the presentation into a two minute video.  Put the video on YouTube.

Shot  March of the Librarians while on the way to the convention.  Shot on a digital camera.  Borrowed some music from march of the penguins.  Posted it on YouTube and told 4 friends.  In 34 days, it reached 100,000 views.

Viral videos (when word spreads from person to person).  If you can get a few people to send something to their friends and their friends, etc.)  A well produced video can have a very wide impact.

Serious content can spread virally through humor.

Some videos will just flop.  Failure is part of the creative process.  2.5 minutes is a long time by YouTube standards. You don’t know ahead of time what will be a hit and what will be a flop.  You have to accept failure as part of the process.

Digital technology is changing the process of making videos.  You can probably make a video with what you already have in your library. The real cost in making videos is time.  Cost of equipment is minimal compared to the cost of staff time.

The trick is to find the type of video your institution needs and then fine the staff time to do it.  Biggest task is finding people to play in the video. Use a tripod:  any tiny jiggle in your hand adds up to a large shake on screen.  Don’t worry about fancy pans or zooms, just set the camera to something.

Sound:  musical soundtrack is vital.  Take advantage of Tolerated Use (copyright holders are not likely to object to limited use which contributes to their product).  Archive.org is great source for unrestricted material. 

Narration: live audio is less work to edit, but voice-over has better sound quality.  If you cannot voice-over, try fading in and out, or consider whether the story can be told without spoken words.  Add titles as needed.

Uploading:  Work at DVD quality and compress for upload; read the YouTube documentation on video quality (320×240, mono MP3 sound, 30 frames per second; less motion = better compression).  The closer you can get to their specifications, the better.

Time involved:  1 minute of finished video typically represents a day of work or more.  Given the large investment, look for ways to make videos reusable.

Conclusions:if you have the resources, you should try making some videos; it vastly improves the library’s image; don’t be afraid to fail - experiment with new technologies to stay current.  but videos aren’t the last word - keep an eye out for future trends. Things change, and change quickly.  It is not clear how things are going to shake out.  Be agile without acting like a weather vane.  If you don’t have people who can do this, hire creative people, and allow them to experiment with new technologies.

technorati tags:IL2007

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Next Generation Library Interfaces - Marshall Breeding

(This was a very fast paced presentation during lunch in the exhibitor hall)

Common tools for access to local collections:

Library OPAC (ILS module)

Links to publishers,

Cross linking via openurl

Journal finding aids (link resolver)

Metasearch engines

All loosely coupled from the end user’s point of view, and all individually updated throughout the organization.

There is change underway towards providing access to users

There is widespread dissatisfaction with most of the current opacs, and movement among libraries to break out of the current mold and offer new interfaces better suited to user expectations; also decoupling of the front-end interface from the back end library automation system.

What we are seeing now is a broad rethinking of what a library catalog is and what a library web site ought to be:  a more comprehensive information discovery environment, better information delivery tool, more powerful search capabilities and a more elegant presentation. 

The next generation library catalog interface will be more comprehensive, more like open archives initiative model: not shallow searching, but searching within content.  It will harvest the metadata and index it and point back to the original source.

Problems of scale have diminished: hardware and software tends to scale infinitely.

Web 2.0 stuff has to be part of it.  It has to have community aspect - more social and collaborative, web tools and technology that foster collaboration. 

Supporting technologies for 2.0: web services, xml api’s

It is no longer enough to provide a catalog limited to print resources; digital resources cannot be an afterthought.

Forcing different interfaces on a user is becoming less tenable.

Millennial generation library users are well acclimated to the web and how it works in the real world, and they like it.  They are used to relevancy ranking: the good stuff should be listed first; users don’t tend to delve deep into a result list.

Systems have to be fast and responsive; there is a low tolerance for slow systems.  You also need visual information, like book jacket images, rating scores, etc.

Faceted browsing: drill down vs searching boolean or advanced.  They want to be able to type in a broad search then drill down and get into narrower results.  Consider what works in the ecommerce arena.

Include navigational bread crumbs (a way to get back out of where they are), ratings, and rankings.

LCSH vs FAST (faceted approach to subject terminology):  LCSH may not be the best approach any more.

Full MARC vs. Dublin core or mods:  more lightweight formats (mods) work better with multimedia

Common characteristics of next generation catalogs:

Decoupled interface, mass export of catalog data, alternative search engines, alternative interfaces.

Endeca guided navigation from ncsu.edu (also being used by Florida Center for Library Automation)

Aquabrowser library (being used in the queens borough public library (also being used by smaller libraries) has  been around for a while already.  It mostly provides a replacement for the library catalog.

Exlibris Primo is expanding their scope.

Encore from Innovative Interfaces is similar to Primo; provides ever more expanded results. 

It is not enough to search records about an item: today the search has to search full text.

VUFind from Villanova is based on the Apache Solr search toolkit www.vufind.org/demo, developed by a university.

Anyone building a next gen system today would have to have these features in their product.  OCLC worldcat local is an example of next generation - searches worldwide, but puts local results at the top.

technorati tags:IL2007

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Search Engine Strategies: Digging Deeply - Greg Notess

searchengineshowdown.org, also book:  teaching web search skills

snipr.com/il2007strategies - slides from this presentation (slideshare)

Overview:

Phrase search for a name (unique results) - ask.com - 5 results, live - 4 results, yahoo - 9 (or 20 unclustered) results, google - 3 results

Long tail of searches:  when you are looking for something very specific that may not even exist out there on the web, the hard to find things on the fringes where there is not a lot of overlap.  Few librarians use Microsoft Live search, but Live Spaces had two results that were not in any other results. 

Search switching:

If you are only searching one place (google), how good a search are you doing?  are you doing the same thing they just did?

One way to use search switching is by using the search box in IE7 or Firefox.  Click the drop down list of other search engines to run the search again.

Ask.com is better at general broad search

Another way is to use bookmarklets (available on the searchenginewatch site - right side of page)

Other alternatives:  zuula (beta), travando.it, turboscout

flashearth.com:  choose the map you want to search (google, live, yahoo,etc.), and switch between the sources.  Keeps the same zoom level when switching.

booksearchx3 (kokogiak.com/booksearch):  searches against 3 separate book databases - (3 columns) includes amazon, google and live search.  These databases do not overlap as much as the web searches.

Not exactly metasearch engines.  Instead they take you directly to the search engine you want.

All major search engines have a similar look and feel with tabs and drop down options, but  most people just do a web search, which is why search engines are moving to the vertical searching and offering options within the results.

Next generation challenges

Citations: why and what

There is confusion about what is the original source (e.g., same information on wikipedia and CIA world fact book - what was the original source).  How complete are source citations (e.g., in wikipedia) when the source is in a closed database (online journal?)

Wikipedia issues:  which version of a wikipedia article is going to be cited and used; not just what day, but what day and what time (hint:  check the change list in wikipedia - all prior versions are available, but not searchable).  If you are going to cite from Wikipedia, it is probably better to cite from the archive because that will not change.  The current one may (and probably will). Look for the “history” tab at the top of the page.

Facebook searching:  privacy vs. search

Facebook is now a data source for looking for people.  In general, you get a full profile if you are within the network, maybe picture,name, and networks they belong to (less is available outside the network).  If you are trying to do a find information on a person, you can join a network they also belong to - you will get more information than just in network information, without being their “friend”.  Problem is you can only join limited regional networks, and can only switch reginal networks twice every 60 days.  If you join someone else’s workplace, you need to have an email address from that particular work address or college.  So it is limited how far you can dig into the network to find people.

Facebook has said they are going to make their information available to outside search engines, but it is still limited information available.

You can also look there to find facebook statistics (regions, interests, etc)

Other book searching (using book search to dig inside a book):

Microsoft’s live search also has some current book content.

New information source for searchers: searching, not reading; limited access.

Searching can be a real challenge because of poor optical character recognition (ocr) going on.

Amazon search (search inside the book) actually does a better job.  Even a one page result could have the reference answer you want, but it is hit or miss

Google book search has limited access, and may require logging in.  Even books that should be out of copyright may only provide a snippet, or no preview available at all.  It may even give a reference that is not applicable at all.

Amazon will have some old books available for searching inside the book, depending on the publisher

Publishers’ sites:  NAP.org had 3700 books available online for free, with capability to even put the book on your site (gives code to embed).  These books are not available in book search sites

Cache mining: (most users do not use this)

searchengineshowdown site has list of archive sites where you can get old copies of a web page.

Wayback machine has from 1996 to 8-12 months ago (due to copyright issues.  They have the material indexed, but not up.  In the interim, if you are looking to compare versions of a site, you can use the cache features on search site.

Most caching does not include images - it will be text version of the page only.

Google number change:

The total number of results will include clustered results which are not included by default in the initial results.  If you go to the end of the results and click on the link to show all search results, the numbers will actually change, so don’t trust the numbers.  Another way to uncluster is to go into the search string in the address bar and add “&filter=0″ but it only works for smaller numbers

Supplemental Results (from supplemental database) - only worked for 200-800 results.  Label is now gone, but unknown if it is still there.

Google has added more choices to date searches.

“&num=100″ (added to the search string in the address bar) will change result limit to 100 instead of 10

“&imgtype=face” (or news) will limit to faces (or news)

If you are a frequent phrase searcher on Google, be careful about how long the phrase is.  Try breaking a long phrase into two shorter phrases.

Image searching issues - a lot of work has been done, and it still stinks.  Unless someone puts words about the picture somewhere near the picture, people will not find the image.  It all depends on what the image is named or words near the image

Link searching:  Live used to be the best for this, but their commands were pulled in March due to abuse, but if you use “+” in front of the link search, it will still work.

“&pws=0″ will turn off personalized searching in Google (if you are logged in, you will automatically get personalized results)

Related searches:

Google suggest, yahoo drops down suggestions below the search box. ask.com puts them on the left

technorati tags:IL2007

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Games, Learning, and Libraries - Jenny Levine

Gaming:  includes board games, cell phone games, computer games, video games.

Gamer:  typical gamer is different today. US consumers play more online games than visit online video sites.  Middle aged women are the biggest segment of gamers.  Women 18 and older are a significantly greater portion of game playing population than boys age 17 and younger.

Scrabulous is an online game that is now a Facebook application.  36% of the players are daily players, but they do not think of themselves as gamers.

There are a lot of young gamers (90 million up to age 35; boomers are 77 million)2003 Pew Internet study of college students:  70% play online games once in a while, 65% regularly.  Average age of gamers today is 33.

Erickson retirement home video about wii bowling on YouTube - if a retirement community is creating videos about it, maybe libraries should be thinking about this also.

Gamers see themselves as a hero on a quest.  They are willing to experiment and keep trying, willing to seek expertise, and prioritize. They have an inherent distrust of bosses (the “boss” is the name of the villain at the end of each level).  Even super monkeyball has bosses at the end of each level.  “Boss” has a loaded connotation:  so the worst thing to say is “because I said so, I’m the boss” which means to succeed they have to beat you.  It is better to be a strategy guru.

Gamers have strong organization skills, creative problem solvers, focused on feedback.When is gaming educational vs. play?

Examples of educational board games:  candyland, chess, scrabble, boggle, Pokemon? (it is actually a complex game that requires a lot of complex language and relationships.  You have to know everything a card represents.  NASA actually uses Pokemon as a learning game.

Civilization (computer game):  you build a civilization.  You have to know a lot, read a lot of statistics, plan ahead.DDR (dance dance revolution):  pattern recognition, planning ahead - in the new version for wii you can use weapons against your opponent.

World of warcraft: (besides the fact that there is text chat) there is a lot on the screen that one has to keep track of.  For a gamer, it is rapid, strategizing, working together, planning.  Gamers love this.  If you are a gamer looking at the standard library catalog layout, it is really boring.  Something like ebscohost visual search is more in their realm.

Numbers game (techsource symposium)  75% of libraries support gaming, 80% allow patrons to play games on library computers.  40% run gaming programs, 13% run video gaming programs, 20% circulate games. 

Conclusion:  everyone is doing gaming, it’s just not being harnessed.78% said the reputation of the library improved with participants.Popular culture is bad?  Book by Steven Johnson:  Everything bad is good for you: how today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter.  What about romance novels, movies, book discussion groups, etc., that we don’t “judge”  Story time = a communal experience with added value? (same goals as gaming)  Games in the library allows connections in a safe community and more interaction with librariansfas.org/gamesummitCarvers Bay, SC: “gaming the way to literacy”.  Rural, low income constituency.

Integrating games into the collection is difficult because there are so many different platforms and types.integrate with staff, reader’s advisory, open play times.  Even if you don’t have special equipment, you might be able to harness it by having organized play during the times when kids (or others) are coming in to the library to game (runescape?) anyway.  Kids will organize themselves, and tend to stay well behaved because they don’t want to lose their privileges.  In one instance where they couldn’t get DDR sound to work kids just started playing it without the sound.  Several examples shown of libraries converting paper based OPAC quizzes to online games.  Some libraries are teaching kids how to create games.

How much is all this going to cost?  free to no cost (kids can bring in their own equipment - it creates a social space for them)aadl.org has an open gaming board where gamers can compete against gamers in all other participating libraries.  

Presentation will be online tomorrow:  shiftedlibrarian.pbwiki.com

technorati tags:IL2007

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The Future of Search (sort of) - Danny Sullivan

Keynote Speech, Wednesday, Oct. 31

First off, there evidently was an earthquake last night.  Everyone seems to have noticed it except me.  Hmmm. 

Danny Sullivan started out as a journalist.  His advice about earthquakes:  watch us Californians; if we’re not running for cover, you’re o.k.

In 2001 when Google only had 5 tabs, it was difficult for searchers to realize and remember to click the tab to focus the search.

Federated search hit the web: (no one calls it federated search).  AKA  meta search, universal search, answers, shortcuts, blended results. 

Google universal search (May 07):

Automatic queries of the entire web: ( books, images, news, video, local + web); they will be adding more in the future. Relevancy of each vertical silo is evaluated. They compare the results and decide how to group the results (3 or 5 video results? book results first?)

Sample search result image:  top three are next to a map (local results).  Images are entering into the results (e.g., video image clip next to a video result).  There is a little plus (+) symbol under the search result.  If you click on the plus, it will open the video right on the results page.  This is a huge change reflecting that people maybe aren’t so freaked out by changes to search pages.

But it gets confusing because result types from one search do not carry over to another search.  Maybe Google is still figuring out where it is going, or fine tuning it.

A lot more vertical search results (specialized search results) are coming in.  When you go to someplace like Google you are doing a horizontal search.  A vertical search is a specialized or topical search (e.g., news)

Ask 3D & Morph:  June 2007

Google’s universal upstaged them by coming out a few weeks earlier.

3 “pane” design, uses “morph” algorhythm which decides which vertical results to put in each pane.  Top of the page has news.  To the right are images and videos:  attempts to suggest vertical search results, giving what they think are best results in those categories.  But it is not working as well as it should.  Most people just look at the search results down the page, but the news and specialized results are over on the side.  It needs a little more fine tuning.

Microsoft Live:  Sept. 2007

Their main way to get more vertical stuff out is to push Microsoft Answers.

There is a new feature where if you hover over a video result you will get a 30 second preview.  They have a focused health database.  At the top of a search result page is a pane with suggested health answers.  But people tend to pass over this section like they would a banner ad.

Celebrity xrank shows up if you do a name search on a celebrity, which gives you lots of charts and stuff.  They are trying to get you into specialized search results.  Bur it feels like catchup to the other search engines.

Yahoo: Oct. 2007

Pushing Yahoo shortcuts.  Events, music movies, travel, etc.

Specialized search results appear at the top of the page.  video shorts just like Microsoft.

Going forward:

Verticals are becoming more prominent.

Metaphor/presentation is still being worked out.  Ask 3D didn’t generate a boost in searching, but the toolbar download did (allows creating an avatar as part of the toolbar), and now the iWon ramp-up.  Microsoft Live saw gains through its Search Club.

Giveaways are attracting more people than search refinements.

From the past:  will crawlers survive?

Link analysis saved SE’s from drowning in spam.  Now link manipulation has become an issue:

Googlebombing

Artificial link networks (site owners)

Dropping in links google likes (site owners)

Solution (2002):  personalization of results (still applies)

Personalized & Social Search

Reshaping results based on what you personally visit, and what others like you do and visit

Results are reordered based on what’s deemed to be your personal preferences.  Pages may move up or down.  Why it works for Google is that it’s a great ego booster:  e.g., searching your own personal blog, Google sees you are going there often, so it moves that result up to the top for your results (ego boosting)

If you use the google personalized home page and put something on the page, or bookmark something, they use those things to help rank results for your searches.  No one is matching Google in the personalized search results.  It is not getting near the attention it should.

Social search

Eurekster experimented with friend clicks reshaping results in 2004.  Yahoo My Web promised to let us tag and use a network to reshape results.  The idea was as we tagged and saved our friends/web pages, they would be able to shape our search results.  But Yahoo seems to have dropped this.  They seem to be trying to figure out what to do.  People probably don’t want to tag the web.

Social search reality

Neither really has succeeded (the promise and reality of mixing the social graph with search engine).  Eurekster says swikis are much better.  Yahoo dropped many features quietly

Facebook and search:

Social graph/social network data is potentially useful:  watch what others are searhing on; monitor clicks in a more trusted environment, and reshape results based on what works for you. 

But:… do you have to filter to true friends, do you then still need to consider what you will share, does facebook instead work on aggregate level; what is the underlying platform?  Users will likely remain dependent on someone else… (Google?)  They don’t really know how to run a search engine.

Facebook - will they apply a search engine?  go vertical?  people search? discovery? (search is an on demand thing, users have a particular need to fulfill an activity).  Discovery is related but less specific.  There is some crossover, e.g., news - I may not want news, but I stumble upon news about my search.

Google’s invisible tabs - name your tab and google will search through all the other tabs people have named the same.

What else?  Natural language search:  powerset (not out yet), hakia (it classifies topics based on other natural language searches; clustering classification.)

What else?  Human refinement.  Google results can still be manipulated (e.g., viagra search pulls up a lot of unviersity sites because spammers are able to spam open sites).  Mahalo.com is somewhat cluttered, but managed by human editors.  If you are looking for good topically oriented pages, it is a good alternative to wikipedia.

Overall:

Verticals will continue to grow

Personalized searching will also grow, but there are privacy issues.

Social aspect may contine to play a role.

There is a lot of room to grow

7 of 10 Americans experience search engine fatigue. either always usually or sometimes, when researching.

65% say they’ve spent two or more hours in a single sitting but there is another survey that says people experience search rage after 12 minutes.

(Kelton Research of 1000 adults for auobytel)

Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land:  targets both search marketers and searchers.  has a newsletter just devoted to searching (ways to search better).

Searchcr, daily searchcast

sphinn (social site for search marketers)

technorati tags:IL2007

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Gadgets, Gadgets & Gaming

This is the evening program.  The first part was fast paced and fun.  The Gaming part was covered by a group touring U.S. libraries, focused on the games and other non-standard programs in libraries

First, the gadget section.  Quick notes on the even quicker slides (I can’t type that fast).  NB: prices were given, but not information where to find this stuff.

Wifi detector tshirt, shows signal strength for 802.11 b & g. Price: $29.99

Asustek Internet Radio, connects via LAN or WiFi. Price $27.00

64 Gb chips, not available till 2009

Archos 404 camcorder, Price $300

Palm Centro phone 2 inch touchscreen, palm OS, $99 with Sprint contract.

iPhone:  wave of the future (showing picture of Steve Jobs with iPhone stuck in his speedo)

Wireless SMS keyboard. (full size keyboard that sends SMS messages) Powered by phone, but not ready yet.

Mandylion password manager.  Manages 50 login records at a time.  Windows only; Price $49.99.  Has self destruct feature.

Cable cat: plastic cat holds cables together. Price $7.00

Canon snap concept:  wear it as a ring; one button interface.  “Gives your index finger an eye”

Sunray SX2  solar powered golf cart, recharges its own battery through solar panels. Price: $7,000.  Goes up to 35 mph

Meebo Firefox sidebar:  link sharing, alerts to message price: free

Touch screen wireless patient forms clipboard:  Phressia - bacteria resistant touch pad computer, free to all participating doctors offices.  Integrates into doctor’s office database.

MyGo Cane: smart sensor and camera combo to guide blind people.

Format war update:  blu-ray disc is outselling HD-DVD 2:1

e-ink ebook reader. $300, next iteration of ebooks.

iGo everywhere for mobile users - universal adapter for all your mobile devices, price $130

Vudu:  broadband set top box:  plug it into tv and Internet and rent over the Internet Price $249.00

Star wars slippers (star wars characters), price $34.99

HP cloudprint:  print documents on any printer almost anywhere, available from HP

Skitch (in beta, for Macs) free, screen grab tool, easy editing and captioning. See Jing.com for Windows alternative

iPod video goggles:  plugs into ipod, projects virtual 24 inch video screen.  Power comes from iPod.

Wireless iTMS: wifi itunes music store, coming soon to starbucks.  Starbucks will be giving away a free song every day.

Going Green: gadgets (eco friendly):

Mobile library branch?  (pop open cafe)

recycling washer + dryer (compact dishwater tat recycles water from its rinse cycle.  Compact, for apartments

gidget gadget case:  recycled MP3 case

Wattson:  measures energy use in the home. Price $300

Solar charged electro bike:  lightweight and portable, includes self propulsion (hybrid), $7200

Canon rebel XT:  low power circuit design, $480, uses 35% less power

Blackle:  all black interface to google.  uses less power on CRT’s

GreenPrint software:  automatically gets rid of extraneous pages in printing.  Also indicates number of trees saved each year, as well as co2 emissions

Stapleless staplers (cut a tiny flap on page which folds in on itself) $5.99-$7.00

One laptop per child, now in production, $200 per computer, or buy one, donate one for $399

Gaming:

First they invited people with bluetooth enabled phones to turn the bluetooth on.  As they explained what they were doing in the Netherlands, there was a beeping in the middle of the audience, indicating an sms message received.  others verified message was received by them as well.

They then showed a movie about the delph library concept center in the Netherlands:  library on the run:  a bluetooth apparatus for downloading audiobooks and other content

They are making videos of libraries throughout the US:  LBI www.shanachietour.com

The rest of the program was video clips of libraries they have visited in the US., beginning with New York. It
will be available on the shanachietour.com site when it is done.

technorati tags:IL2007

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Developing Taxonomies

(Tools for navigating the uncharted seas of information); Kathryn Breininger, Mary Whittaker

Slides and handouts are available on the IL2007 website.  This was a massive, very technical presentation - most of the audience was overwhelmed with the scope and depth!  Examples of existing taxonomies are LCSH and MeSH.  These notes just touch the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Corporate knowledge workers spend 13 hrs. per week looking for and analyzing information.

Users have set ways of finding and organizing information.  If there are not pointers to what they are looking for, they will not find the information.  What makes sense to me may not make sense to you.

There is no control over terminology with full text searching.

Taxonomy is a possible solution:  controlled vocabulary with a browsable hierarchical structure by genus/species, instance, and whole/part.  It may include equivalent relationships, and provides searchable terms for a user.

Considerations in developing a taxonomy:

With top down, broadest terms are identified first and narrow terms are filled in; preferred for new taxonomy

With a bottom up, narrower terms are identified, and broader terms are added; preferred for adding to existing taxonomies

Facets: multiple taxonomies can be developed based on dimensions.  Search engines can take advantage of the facets.

Determine requirements: 

Scope, purpose:  who is it for, what is the business purpose

Source materials (what are the files, who is responsible for keeping it up to date). 

Inventory and analyze the content: how many different types are there, is there metadata in place already, are there facets that can provide smaller taxonomies

Is there an existing taxonomy that can be purchased

Develop a draft taxonomy:

Establish common rules for terms, format and structure (z39.15 standard)

Reconcile terminology issues

Use concepts universally

Start broad, not deep

Develop user levels of structure

Provide users with a draft for review, conduct usability studies to see how it works with end users. 

Refine Taxonomy:

Review and refine, but know when to quit - taxonomies can be very expensive based on value at the leaf node.   Establish test criteria for testing the quality of taxonomy

Apply taxonomy to content:

Deploy with tag content (evaluate cost effectiveness to capture older material); integrate with existing applications

Manage and maintain taxonomy:

Establish ownership, governance processes, change control processes (schedule, time frame?)

Develop a maintenance plan, review criteria periodically

Documentation (rules and authorities, update policies, process for feedback, contact information)

Keep the taxonomy up to date: language is dynamic, taxonomies will have to be changed.  Create a “candidate” lists of terms for consideration (remove, create synonyms)

Multidisciplinary team:

Terminology decisions - Information professionals (librarians, archivists)

Technology decisions - IT

Subject matter experts from across the company

End users.

Implementation drivers (why companies develop these taxonomies:

Search inefficiencies (3/4 of content can’t be found)

Bottom line is being impacted by inability to find information

IT is pressured to find solutions, and “discover” taxonomy  products

technorati tags:IL2007

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Building your techie team: Tips for training staff

Michael Stephens, Sarah Houghton-Jan

Training has changed.  Model of putting everything on the screen is dying.

“Experiment” model:

Engage: 

Use real world examples:  how does it apply in their own library, in their context; give them something tangible (exercise) to take away.

Stay relevant to the topic.

Xenogogue (a guide through a strange land”

Be available and accessible (as a guide); encourage independence.

Play:

Encourage exploration (at their own pace/level); allow fun; make exercises lighthearted.  Let people play. e.g., if you are training about blogging, let them create a blog about whatever they want.

Explain:

Give context for all topics; repeat; handouts and online materials (people like to hold something in their hand).

Reward:

For right answers, for participation, for completion, for presence.(use words like proud, pleased)

Imagine: give them time to dream about what they can do with what you give them; give them a to-do list;

Mentor: treat students like adults, be available for questions (during and after); pair students (of equal abilities), & expect success from all.

Reinforces what they learn if you can get “in the trenches” with them after training.

Empower:  use the tool you are teaching about; emphasize transferability of new skills. e.g., teach flickr by using it.  Give them confidence to go mess around with it and continue learning on their own.

New:  There is always something new; Hold an entire class just on dealing with change.

Learn to learn, Adapt to change, Scan the horizon.

Time: allow enough time for practice, questions; do the training early - enough time to adapt to the change.  Then give them time to try it.

technorati tags:IL2007

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