Computers in Libraries 2006:

Overview:

2004 was the year of the Blog, 2005 was the year of the wiki, so what is left for 2006? Judging from this year’s CIL it’s distributed technology, open source technology on the front end and back end, social software (such as this wiki), and the library as “experience”. Wiki applications are not only going strong, but are being seamlessly integrated into websites and in many cases being used to manage entire websites. For an example check out the University of Minnesota Library’s Staff Page or University of South Carolina – Aiken’s library web page run using PMWiki, an open source wiki platform. Of course CIL 2006 had it's very own wiki.

[I also like the one at UConn: University of Connecticut Libraries' Staff Wiki. If you want to look at some of the staff entries, feel free to use the account I set up: user name = Pat Semple, password = patsemple. Rather than search for keywords, use the “Random Page” option in the menu to get an idea of how they are using it *OR* click on one of the items in the menu of “Library Areas” that they have set up. Clearly still under construction, but gives the general idea. ---Pat Semple]

But let us not forget blogs! New blogs are starting at the rate of one new one per second around the globe. Blink and someone just started a blog, blink again and…well, you get the picture. Many academic institutions are now providing blog space as a free service to students as well as email and web page hosting. And it must be big if Google is getting onvolved. Check out there new blog only search. Doing a quick search of .edu blogs I found nearly 300,000 blogs and probably a lot more by the time someone reads this.

Wanting to share what I thought were some very good presentations over three days of this years CIL it seemed natural to incorporate two big themes of the conference, wikispace and open source. Freely accessible on the web and open for comment it’s no longer a static report but an active workspace pulling together diverse resources distributed across the web. Localizing distributed knowledge and distributing localized knowledge.

Out of the dozen or so presentations I'd like to point out three that really got me excited to come back to work with some fresh ideas. I have included links to all three presentations as well as some supplementary material. All of this years CIL presentations can be found on the http://www.infotoday.com/cil2006/presentations/���target=_blank>Computers in Libraries 2006 website. Some very interesting stuff going on.

David Lee King:

The most interesting presentation I went to was from David Lee King of the Kansas City Public Library. He had some great ideas about something we often take for granted, our web presence. He pointed out that our website is not just a toll but an “experience” for the user (and there are ways we can make that experience much more positive). Since he is from the public library sector one might think it wouldn’t totally apply to an academic setting, but it clearly does. Librarians worry that the internet is going to appropriate there place in the search for information but King points out that the library “experience” itself is a marketable commodity. That being the case our websites need to be user focused and we need to avoid negative or neutral experiences.

The key point I came away with was that we can do all the high tech web design we want but if we’re not focusing on the user experience in that web environment, we’re missing the point. I’ve read many articles and often heard librarians say how patrons want “Google” but King’s presentation made me realize that our attention shouldn’t be making our interfaces like “Google”, really that is focusing on the wrong end of the equation. We should not be focused on designing the website in any particular way (i.e. making it Google-like), we should be designing the patron’s interaction with our website. I encourage everyone to check out his presentation slides which go into greater detail on how to do this. The other two presentations I've highlighted are great sources for thinking about what we might be able to do in the future, these are things we are fully capable of implementing tomorrow.

For further reference:

Elements of the User Experience by Jesse James Grant. Written from a corporate perspective yet completely applicable to libraries, probably any type of website. An excerpt can be found on his website and its also available from the Rockville Library.

Paul Miller (Talis):

The Web 2.0 Challenge to Libraries

Library 2.0 is about opening the library up and delivering content to our users where, when, and how they want it. Paul called for us to “disaggregate our monolithic library systems…”. He went on to say library systems should be like Lego blocks, you can build the picture on the box just as intended or you can build something completely different, our legos should match our users needs...not the picture on the box. Library 2.0 is also about what Miller calls "shared innovation". We all know of many great projects that are going on at libraries around the globe, big and small. Wouldn't it be great if we could also share in those innovations even if we didn't have the web designers and programmers available to us. He made me realize that libraries aren't competing against each other such that if a patron goes to library X and has a great experience that means that library Y loses out. The situation is much more that everytime a library figures out a way to do something better, more efficient, or meets a users need, all libraries benefit because trust is built in libraries as a place. He referenced OCLC's report Perceptions of libraries and Information Resources which goes into some detail about users impressions of libraries vs. the internet/other information sources and every librarian on the planet should read it.

Miller has already blogged some responses to issues/questions that were brought up during the discussion.

Roy Tennant and Andrew Pace:

Catalog/OPACS of the future

According to Tennant (and I agree) -

Current catalogs are good at:

• Inventory

• Control

• Known Item Searching

But not good at:

• Displaying results by logical groupings (e.g., FRBR, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records )

• Faceted browsing

• Relevance ranking

• Recommending similar titles

Two key hurdles to overcome:

Current technology tends to stovepipe information

Reluctance to collaborate deeply on profession-wide level

Andrew Pace from North Carolina State University Library highlighted how some of these problems have been addressed in their new Endeca powered catalog (which I think is very exciting, please take a moment to browse around it) What I like about it is the ability to browse according to:.

What I like about it is the ability to browse according to:

• Subject Topic with the ability to drill down into narrower topics (without having to know LC)

• Genre

• Format

• Author

All of these indexes which are already available and running behind our systems already are made accessible and intuitive to the end user.

Much easier to simply click a button that says "find more by this author" or "more titles like this". Plus, browsing by subject becomes much more intuitive with this interface I think.

Capabilities the catalog needs to strive for:

• Ability to search for like items

• Ability to search for items by same author

• Ability to search for similar subject matter

• Ability to “browse” the shelf through the catalog without going to shelf itself (many catalogs are adopting this ability as well)

• Ability to limit search to just items currently available (this one seems like a no brainer to me and I think our students in particular would appreciate this functionality)

• Link to online reviews and summaries.

MC's catalog currently has the capacity to do much of the above but it is not necessarily intuitive to our users.

References from Tennant's presentation:

Changing Nature of the Catalog by Karen Calhoun. This report, commissioned by the Library of Congress, analyzes research library catalogs and suggests options for their future. Includes a preliminary assessment of the feasibility of next steps and a blueprint for change. Structured interviews of noted library and information science professionals provide context for the recommendations.

The Curiouser project from OCLC.

Other Library Catalogs I found interesting:

San Francisco Public Library - includes online reviews and quick link to "is this checked out".

Ann Arbor District Library - online reviews, blogs, ability to add notes to items, in general very cool, user friendly catalog catalog. Check out Jon Blyberg's blognetwork administrator and lead developer for Ann Arbor.

Georgia Public Library systemsPines catalog. Interesting subject clustering and shows how "browsing" the shelf through the catalog can work. Based on open source, Open-ILS technology