Session B301 - Mashups & Data Visualizations: New Breed of Web Applications October 31, 2007

Darlene Fichter, Head, Indigenous Studies Portal, University of Saskatchewan

Web 1.0

• realm of the HTML coders

Web 2.0

• don’t need to know HTML
• citizen journalists, stock photo sites
• DIY Programming

What is a mashup?

• uses content from more than one source to create a new service.
• uses an API or RSS feed
• sent in an XML stream

Mashup Ecosystem

• Open Data
• Open set of services and applications (APIs)
• Us

The library could be one of the sources of content, as well as the place that creates the mashups that use content.

• Programmableweb.com is a great website for sources of mashups.
• Mapping, photos and shopping mashups are really hot right now.

Implications

• Fastest growing ecosystem - Most of the sites we’re going to right now are mashups
• Questions of authority and province - where is the data from? Is it reliable?
• Don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to use APIs

Mashup Tools

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

Google Maps

• Chocomap.com
• McMaster Aerial Photos (GIS Data)
• Western Springs History

Yahoo Pipes

• A little more complicated than some of the other mashup tools
• Except that it uses types of advanced database queries - boolean terms, etc. which librarians are pretty good at, so it’s not impossible to use
• Cambridge Public Library - top book covers

Unintended Consequences

• Garbage In, Garbage Out. If you don’t know the real source of the data
• Client side scripts that modify the pages that you look at.

These days there are so many information rich data visualizations in newspapers and magazines. There are some really good tools out there to help you do that kind of thing.

Tools:

• Web site structure
• Newsmaps
• Facets as Elastic Lists

Social Sites for Data Visualization

• Important new medium
• an individual should get value from their contribution
• these contributions should provide value to peers
• the organization that hosts the service should derive aggregate value and be able to expose this back to the users

Tools

• Many Eyes - from IBM, will analyze text and display tag clouds. View and discuss visualizations, view and discuss datasets, create visualizations from existing datasets, upload your own data, topic hubs, select items to watch, track contributions, see comments
• Swivel - tasty data goodies. Shows you teh source, gives lots of graphs. Very cool.
• LivePlasma - shows relationships between actors, directors and movies
• Gapminder / Trendalyzer - bought by Google

This was an amazing session - I learned a LOT about some really cool tools for data visualization and mashups. I’m really excited to explore some of these tools and see what could be useful for my library.

Session A202 — Promoting Play Through Online Discovery: Lego Building October 30, 2007

Helene Blowers and Meredith Farkas talked about the concept of “playing” with technology - as ways to learning more about how to use technology, online social networking tools and other online applications in our libraries as well as ways to train others to use them. Helene specifically told us to carve out time during our day to allow ourselves to play with different tools.

I had been thinking about this concept a lot lately, as sometimes I wonder if people look at the work I’m doing with blogs, wikis, IM, RSS, web pages, etc. as “not real library work.” I think it’s imperative that as librarians we experiment with different tools, resources and technologies. The use of one particular tool may not be immediately apparent, but you never know when some situation or problem might arise and that tool could be the perfect application to address that issue.

This point was driven home for me when last week I heard a report on NPR about the local NPR affiliate station in San Diego, and how they had used web-tools to get information out about the fires. The web-developers at the station created a public Google Map and a Twitter feed with information about the fires, evacuation areas, shelters and other pertinent public information. The key quote from the report for me was this one:

Online Managing Editor Leng Caloh relied on My Map, a fairly new application from Internet search engine Google. People usually use My Map to pinpoint things like the best places to play golf or get a drink.

“The playing that a lot of us on the team do in our free time has been the key to our success,” Caloh said.

You never know what kinds of applications you could use these new tools for, until it becomes very apparent. So play around with them.

IL2007: Opening Keynote, 10/30 October 30, 2007

Reference 2.0
Joe Janes, iSchool University of Washington

Historical overview

• Samuel Green’s 1876 “Personal Relations with Readers” introduced reference as we know it
• Special libraries were really the first to do reference; academic libraries came in relatively late in the game (~1910)
• Reference manifests itself in different ways in different settings

Current situation

• We live in a world where people can find information independently, and can find help doing so in many different places, though reference was developed when there was less information that was harder to find
• What does this mean for reference?
• It’s worth assuming that everything will be in digital form
• The ultimate goal of Google books is to have “all the books”
• We’re in an ever-more digital world
• New and different ways of searching (i.e., the channel surfing method of finding information - I’m not channel surfing, I’m watching all the channels)
• In our asymptotically digital world, we have ways of getting at information at all different levels, from entire words to individual phrases
• Horizontal/federated searching make for a totally new environment of access
  • we’re increasingly focused on parts
• James Wire’s reference textbook (1940s?) — “They will choke and die in front of you before they tell you what they want.”

How do we insert reference into this world?

• Don’t complain about Wikipedia - change it
• Public libraries can seek information needs in their community like questions asked on public blogs or online forums
• We are made for depth, accuracy and authority
• Google gets 100s of millions of hits a day — we can’t handle that
  • We need to focus on providing service to people who want our services
• Levels of service
• High-end tech users are “individually communal”
• If many of our users are living in this Web 2.0/participatory web world, we need to be there too, and we need to be there actively making our mark
• People like Second Life because you get to create things
• If we can help people make their creative works more usable, we’re doing them a service
• We need to play to our strengths and get out of the library
  • we need to be somewhere and everywhere (physical and virtual space)
  • the concept of the library has to leak out of the building
  • we know our gate counts, our reference stats, but rarely do we consider our web traffice
    • we’ve probably double our usage in the last five years via the web, but we’re not getting more $$
• We see a segmentation of our populations
  • for those “diving deep” - we do reference and research
  • for quick, transitory needs (like IM questions) - our mantra should be “move them forward” - point them to resources, give search tips, get them to the next step
  • for high-tech users - help them find the network
  • for non-users - leave them alone — market yourself as a time and money saver, but don’t chase users

What we do online has to be better than what we do in person

• When people are there, they’ve already made the commitment
• When they’re online, they can be gone in a heartbeat

My thoughts:
This was a great keynote. I liked Janes’ points on web services (not just websites) and how important they are for us. I also appreciated the absence of any doomsday “Reference is dying” assertions.

User-Generated Content October 30, 2007

Meredith Farkas and Josh Petrusa, Norwich University

Web 1.0: Democratized access to information

Web 2.0: Democratized participation

What is user-generated content?

• Comments
• Ratings
• Wiki contributions
• Uploading photos
• Contributing to online communities

Why User-Generated Content?

• We don’t know everything
  • When we allow other people to contribute knowledge, we can all benefit
    from it
• Insufficient metadata
  • Making information objects found online more findable and richer
• Findability and refindability
  • finding images on flickr, for instance
• Stories people tell about items are of value
• Interacting with materials creates a more personal connection
• People are already generating their own content

Tags

• user created descriptive metadata
• Folksonomy - system of organizing through tagging
• There are many ways to describe items
• Tags help us create collections (i.e. IL2006)

Why tags?

• Lets people make sense of content using their own vocabulary
• Helps people to re-find their own content
• Helps people to discover new content

Why not tags?

• No control
• people can use plural or singular words, use dashes and underscores, etc
• Multiple terms to describe a single concept
• People tag things selfishly (means nothing to you, but means something to
  me)
• People tag incorrectly

How do we improve tagging?

Examples of User-Generated Content

• Picture Australia project
• Western Springs History
  • WordPress blog
  • pictures of historical homes in Western Springs, IL
• NCSU - historical photos in flickr
• LibraryThing
  • tons of user-generated metadata
  • cool tag clouds
  • you can make suggestions and recommendations based on tags and other
    user-generated content
• BookSpace (from Hennepin County PL)
  • public library users engaged in generating content
  • also have comments on catalog records
• Penn Tags
  • put tags into catalog
• RocWiki
  • Rochester

Issues

• Moderation
  • if you’re going to get involved in user-generated content, you have to
    have time to moderate
• Tech issues — how are we going to make this happen?
• differentiation between user content and institutional content

Session C105 — Cool Tools for Library Webmasters October 29, 2007

Cool Tools for Webmasters

Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter

Communicating Ideas:

- Sketchcast.com
- JingProject.com
    Use Jing during IM reference?
- Picnik - online photo editor
    firefox plugin
- KerPoof (?)
    animated video tool
- slideshare.net
    sharing powerpoint, presentation slides
    also can use Scribd (can search text), SplashCast (combine ppt, mp3, images), Zoho Show (edit slides online), SlideAware (best stats, limit access)
- thumbalizr.com
- Visual Page Rank
- IBM Unstructured Information Modeler
    load in unstructured datasets
    automatically classify and create categories
    works for 1,000-10,000 records

Utilities:

- DiffDaff - compares files across directories (thumb drive and desktop?)
- LogView

Development:

- SOAP Sonar
    Testing and analyzing Web Services
- Evolved
- Perl Express

Fun with Images:

- Photo Slideshow
- Flashgallery Generator

Search and Indexing:

- Google SiteMap
- LibraryFind (Oregon State)
- dbWiz (Simon Fraser University)
- MasterKey (IndexData)
- IBM Omnifind Yahoo Edition
- Google Coop CSE
- OpenURL Referrer Toolbar
- FlogBlog

Other:

- Portable Firefox
- Asterix Logger v1.02
- Undelete
- Unstoppable Copier
- Simple File Shredder
- KeePass

*******************

My thoughts:
I’m excited about the two tools by IBM that they talked about - the Unstructured Information Modeler and the Omnifind Search product. I also like the idea of using Jing for quick visual help during IM reference. I’m going to try some of these things out.

Session C104 - Inspiration for your Library Redesign October 29, 2007

Bennett Ponsford and Christina Hoffman Gola, Texas A&M University

Notes:

Questions to ask users

• What type of items are users searching for?
• How do they discover new resources?
• What to do with subject and class guides?
  • Audience and function questions
  • format, location and terminology
• What web 2.0 features are desired?

Methodology: Recruitment

• Traditional
  • blanket campus emails
  • advertising in student newspapers
• New Tools
  • FB group
  • blog
  • discussion forum

Results: First Survey

• People aren’t really looking for pages on the website, they were looking for
  content

• Searching differences between different user groups
• Need for information about the library — undergrads needed more how-to
  information
• Interaction with the Libraries’ website
• Web 2.0 Issues
  • Limited interest in tagging
  • Limited faculty interest in user-generated content (undergraduates were
    more interested, but still not overwhelmingly so)
  • Traditional preferences for communicating with the Libraries

Results: Second Survey

• Confirmed earlier results on use of the site
• Default search
  • Want books or everything, but last searched for articles
• What to keep on home page?
  • Emphasis on simplifying the homepage, but had no consensus on what that
    meant

Results: Bulletin Board

• Intense hatred of our pop-up windows
• Frustration
  • Want to search, click on full-text
  • not interested in all the options we give them*** (this is using SFX and
    MetaLib)
• Confusion
  • Often can’t even describe where they got lost

Results: Focus Groups

• Undergraduates didn’t know about Google Scholar, but it was the first place
  that faculty went
• Integrate systems (catalogs, edocs, etc)
  • users wanted to log in once and have it personalized and not have to log
    in again
• Discovery of databases
  • not using Libraries’ website to discover - are mostly learning through
    word of mouth
• Subject and class guides
  • Audience was different than previously assumed
  • Interdisciplinary issue on campus
  • Not discovering them b/c they weren’t in good locations or listed in good
    formats
• Need more ways to allow self-discovery and shared knowledge ****
• Visual and “sexy” is good (participants encouraged them to “sell the
  sizzle”)
  • no one even realized they had lots of RSS feeds
• Use of Web 2.0 tools
  • Undergrads mentioned wikis
  • Use of RSS — glass half full or half empty?
    • About 50/50 are aware of RSS and its use in libraries
    • Where does user education come in (*this is a great opportunity for
      instruction)
  • Personalization features
    • She also mentioned personalization of librarians, as in creating
      Facebook-like profiles for librarians on the Libraries’ website

Web 2.0 in Academic Libraries

• How far should we go?
• Academic standard vs. Web 2.0
• How much education to we provide?
  • i.e. do we want to support use of blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, etc. with
    instruction

Recommendations

• Help them find our stuff and then get out of the way
• Reaffirmed traditional design rules
  • Let the user control the interface
  • integrate systems
• Determine user groups’ needs BEFORE trying to use 2.0 tools

Next Steps

• Focus groups, interviews, etc

********************************************************************************

Erica Reynolds, Johnson County Public Library

Web design is a fairly new, fairly “young” world, but art is ancient — we can
learn from and be inspired by art

Lessons about web design learned at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Lesson 1: Have a back-up plan.

• When redesign rolled out, they still gave staff access to old site
• Went from 5,000+ pages to 250

Lesson 2: Be bold. Be dynamic. Be human.

• Teen Scene - users can personalize and select their own skins

Lesson 3: When you paint to sell, you paint people.

• Teen Scene - teens can submit poetry, comments, etc.
• www.jocokids.org

Lesson 4: Enliven your collection through reorganization and presentation.

• Break apart your content and see how you can put it back together again
• Redistribute content to enliven collection
  • Change interface for purchased content based on what patrons want

Lesson 5: Technology changes everything.

Lesson 6: Experiment with small studies and prototypes.

• Usability studies
• You have to back up large changes with small studies
• Card sort
• Paper prototyping and more paper prototyping

Lesson 7: A desire for beauty and serenity endures.

Lesson 8: We like surprises. And anticipating the surprise is even more delicious.

• Created a button that says “Surprise!” and people liked to click on it.

Lesson 9: A good guide enhances the experience exponentially.

Lesson 10: Destruction and creation and forever linked.

Lesson 11: Never stop innovating.

Lesson 12: We can be both prestigious and playful.

* Usability stuff is up at www.jocolibrary.org/usability

Session D104 — MySpace & Facebook: Pros & Cons October 29, 2007

Aaron Schmidt, Director, North Plains Public Library, & Author, walkingpaper.org

“WhoseSpace?”

Presentation

• Putting ourselves out there in social networking sites puts us in the user’s realm.
• Libraries are unfriendly in our web spaces, as well as our physical spaces
• Google doesn’t yell at you, it gives you good suggestions
• Social networks take “story time” to the digital stage
• Newsflash: MySpace is teaming up with Skype? Wow - big news!
• MySpace accounts by different libraries:

Brooklyn College Library
Denver Public Library
UIUC Undergradute Library
London Public Library (if you like the way your site looks, teens probably don’t.)
ALA

• It’s not just enough to have a profile - you have to have content! This is the most important point.
• Have a plan before you announce your profile
• facing resistance from administration about setting up a profile? It’s an intellectual freedom issue.
• Senator Matt Murphy of IL, wanted to block all social networking sites in IL libraries. He used a blog to get out the word! Doesn’t get it.
• Yalsa has a good page on social networking sites and DOPA.
• Bookspace - MySpace for books and adults

******************************

Susan Herzog, Information Literacy Librarian & Meredith K. James, Assistant Professor, Eastern Connecticut State University

“The Facebook Phenomenon: What Our Students Need to Know”

• How do students use facebook? (80% of college students use it because their friends do, 1/4 of students who use it say that their personal information is more private than it was two years ago, 22% say that such data is less secure)
• Facebook is 8 times better read than the New York Times
• Good blogs about Facebook: fbTown, Global Neighbourhood
• Statistics show that a lot of students accept friend requests uncritically
• How do students use facebook? party notices, embarrass friends with pictures, procrastinate, people watch, post announcements. Why? funny, sexy, for attention, easy, free, part of their culture
• So many security issues with Facebook - graduate schools, administrators & professors reading profiles, students posting inappropriate pictures
• University of New Mexico (?) has banned access to the site
• Our job is to educate students about the dangers and uses of putting up personal information on Facebook - this is her main point.

*********************

Ok, I would have liked to hear more about what university libraries can be doing with Facebook, if anything. The Facebook session was more about “Ooh, how dangerous! Let’s warn them of the dangers…” and that’s about it.

Ha! October 29, 2007

From the Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette:

Library 2.0, Embracing
A new version of the Internet (version 2.0) is now available. Libraries are now free to abandon the first one.

– Posted from Internet Librarian 2007.

IL2007 - The New Rules of Web Design October 29, 2007

Jeff Wisniewski, University of Pittsburg

Rule of Seven

• Limit your content categories to 7 +/- 2
• This isn’t necessarily true
• Very context-dependent; if your content is well-organized, you may be fine with more than 7

Three clicks rule

• …is dead
• Users will click through on a longer path, as long as they feel that they are really getting to their desired page

Design for 800×600?

• No
• Nielsen says optimize for 1024×768 now
• Focus on flexible, rather than fixed width designs

Don’t look at other library websites for redesign inspiration (this is sad)

Banner blindness

• Users are used to seeing ads at the top of web pages, so don’t put mission-critical information there
• You can put information there, but make sure it’s also linked elswhere

Pop Up windows

• No

Flash

• It’s not taboo anymore, but the technology has to be used properly (I’d like more information on this)

Mouseover menus

• Slower and not scannable

Opening links in new window can be okay, but let people know you’re doing it

Keep it above the fold?

• You don’t really have to, research indicates that users will scroll — still, it’s best to keep your most important info above the fold

Put pictures of people on the website, but not if they’re too good-looking. people don’t trust them

“It’s never a bad thing to delight users”

IL 2007 - Opening Keynote October 29, 2007

Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet and the American Life

2.0 and the Internet World

*****

Notes:

Eight hallmarks of the new digital ecosystems
1) ubiquitous
the web is a storage device
2) internet at the center of the revolutions
73% adults 93% teenagers use internet
broadband at about 50%
broadband users are content creators
3) wirelessness is it’s own adventure - carry on internet use anywhere
wireless users use the internet differently than non-wireless users
more likely to be content creators
college students are living in the future
4) ordinary citizens have the chance to be content creators
no longer in a broadcast era
“Facebook is the dashboard for social life”
content creation (even if in fact blogging) -isn’t considered blogging any more
hard to capture who is writing and who is reading blogs
19% of young people have created avatars in virtual worlds
5) content creators have a large audience
54% of college students read blogs
36% of adults read blogs
older people are delighted to get a larger audience for blogs
younger people are horrified to get a larger audience for blogs
44% of young adult internet users read Wikipedia
6) internet users are sharing what they know
using the internet to rate things
34% of young internet users have “tagged” things
7) americans are customizing their online experience
(iGoogle, rss aggregators, etc.)
“myLibrary” - would this be even something to consider?
8 ) different people use these technologies in different ways
Gadgets
Actions (w/ gadgets)
Attitudes
9 different technology user groups (1 non-users)
1) high end - OMNIVORES (8%)
into web 2.0, blog, make and share stuff online
young, male, late 20s, racially diverse, broadband, students
2) high end - CONNECTORS (7%)
connect, don’t create as much as the Omnivores
late 30s, female dominant, email, IM
3) high end - LACKLUSTER VETERANS (8%)
male, 40ish, more white, more upscale
not thrilled with ICT enabled connectivity, being “always on”
4) high end - PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCERS (8%)
like tech for what it can help them do
40ish, diverse, upscale, full-time workers
5) middle end MOBILE CENTRICS (10%)
early 30s, gender parity, minorities rule, middle income
love their phones, functionality
6) middle end CONNECTED BUT HASSLED (10%)
more female, mid-40s, to go online is a hassle, white, middle income
experience information overload
7) low end INEXPERIENCE EXPERIMENTERS (8%)
50ish, female dominant, diverse, occasionally take advantage of interactivity
8 ) low end LIGHT BUT SATISFIED (15%)
mid-50s, fine with what they have, don’t need much more
call them to check their email, love TV and radio
9) low end INDIFFERENTS (11%)
lifestyle choice - I don’t like this stuff
late 40s, whites, don’t need the internet
10) low end OFF THE NETWORK (15%)
mid-60s, no cell phone, no internet, female dominant
tend to be poorer

large low-tech crowd (49%)
small technophile group (8%)
lots of tech capability idle in people’s hands and homes
not yet in a mature phase of ICT adoption in the US

connectivity changes our relation to information, and to each other
1) volume of information is growing (long tail)
2) velocity of information is increasing (smart mobs)
3) venues of intersection with info and people multiply - place and time shifing occurs “absent presence” “present absence”
4) venturing for information has changed - search strategies and expectations have changed (very quickly)
5) vigilance for information transforms - attention is truncated “continuous partial attention” and elongated “deep dives”
6) valence (relevance) of information improves - “daily me” for news
7) vetting of information becomes more social
8 ) viewing of information becomes more horizontal, less vertical, new reading strategies emerge as coping mechanisms
9) Voting on and ventilating about infomration proliferates, people feel more powerful
10) inVention of info and visibility is greater

*****

My thoughts:

The Pew Internet and the American Life project has provided so much great data about who is using the internet and why. I think it’s interesting that the number of technophiles is a lot smaller than made out by the media. However, many of these technophiles are students, so what does that mean for academic libraries. If these high-end internet users are content creating all over the web, what does that mean for libraries and library websites? Libraries are good (and getting better) at providing access to content, but not necessarily creating content. How can this change? Should it?