things overheard at Internet Librarian 2005 Wednesday, Oct 26 2005 

Hi folks - gee, is anyone reading this??

Buzz from the conference — from Steve Cohen - don’t create a blog unless you have something to say.

I’ve got to figure out what it is that I want to say… it could change over time — I’m still new at this.

Second comment overheard — have you noticed that most of the vendors send their cute male reps to this conference — a combination of the Library profession being mostly female and a large number of gay men making up the balance of males. Just an observation…. Heck even the Google speaker - Adam Smith is a Hugh Grant lookalike.

it is lunch time and I must get something to eat….

IL05 - Blogs and Wikis and RSS — oh my! Tuesday, Oct 25 2005 

Session by the ever-charming, ever-witty - Steven M. Cohen

Trends in Blogs, RSS, Wikis, and Other Stuff

http://Internetlibrarian.pbwiki.com

http://openinternetlibrarian.blogspot.com

splogs – machine generated blogs that dump spam into PubSub and other blog softwares

what’s new?

The big boys have caught up with blog searching. – doing okay – not as good as Steve’s company

Google caught up with RSS and has incorporated it into their newssearches. But Google news is STILL in beta – 2 ½ years – because they cannot make any money on it because they are only repackaging other sites’ content.

Add im and blogsite on our business cards – my space and del.icio.us sites being put on business cards.

Yahoo! Bought Flickr to get their library of images

Return of My_________ whatever

Netvibes allows you to build your own homepage.

My Yahoo is still around

Online rating tools:
www.reddit.com

n President asks The Onion to stop using the official presidential seal… (NYTimes)

n give me a break

www.digg.com

www.memeorandum.com - news aggregator

www.opencontent.com/oishii — japanese for delicious - they search through del.icio.us every five minutes – they are

Interaction and Collaboration – www.librarything.com the coolest thing that Steve has seen in his entire life! It allows me to create my own library and comment on the books – patrons can comment and give personal ratings – shared with other people.

www.sandbox.solurcelabs.com/livemarks/

life management

43 things – tell people what we want to. Build a community of support for what we want to be or do.

Planzo.com build a calendar – share your calendar, private calendars etc.

Are metasearches back? http://searchword.gada.be

www.meebo.com allows you to connect to yahoo IM or msn etc.

– there’s more on Steve’s website — he ran out of time — check it out

Internet Librarian - Day 2 Tuesday, Oct 25 2005 

Hi again - here’s my blog from Liz Lawley from this morning’s Keynote –

fun speaker, eh?

Elizabeth Lane Lawley – Social Computing and the Info-Pro

Liz’s blog is the third hit on Google when you query Liz

Wired Long-tail and power distribution law.

We need to be good librarians – no algorithmic librarian. We need to make the connections of content to client. We use technology to augment and reach out to find the content to satisfy the needs of clients.

Cathy Sierra’s blog – creating passionate users

Eh?

Social contacts – how do I find a restaurant? Ask the Web? No – we ask friends for recommendations.

My Yahoo! Allows me to indicate our trusted advisers and this helps us to narrow our search.

Del.icio.us allows you to create a bookmark list. Becomes a social contact for recommending sites.

Who are the people who know things about the things I care about – and we can check their bookmarks.

Not all social networks are equal – we don’t have to be friends with all these contacts, nor do we need to trust our friends’ recommendations.

Herb White – the Joy of Finding!

Filter a search through the library’s bookmarks or through my doctor’s bookmarks – del.icio.us allows a way of doing that. Filter my search through people, not through algorithms. My Yahoo! Allows me to create trusted network.

The risk – we can cut ourselves off from new info – serendipity of finding the things that we didn’t know we needed.

How do we define (find?) a trusted information source?

Use del.icio.us to find out what other people are calling something. If we rely on tags to find info – we may not get everything because not everyone tags or uses the same tag.

The ESP Game – play online

43 folders – a blog
lifehacker – another blog

continous partial attention – like watching a radar screen to find the one piece of information that will be important.

Is continuous connectivity bad for us? Or is it bad for US – bad for the community?

Attention is a commodity that a speaker has to earn – but the speaker isn’t the center of the universe – audience will listen when there is something worthwhile to say and tune out when they aren’t saying something that is important.

Meet the lifehackers – nyt magazine October 16 issue

Geekdom’s fave book – getting things done – Allen

Social bookmarking
Tagging

Don’t try to make things go away – try to make them better.

Don’t try to do everything – but don’t shut it all out.

My comment – watching a soap opera every day, everything seems important, but you can follow the major stories by reviewing a couple times a week.

buzzing along

more buzz from the Internet Librarian Tuesday, Oct 25 2005 

McBee isn’t a coffee drinker — so what is there to drink at the morning continental breakfast? milk and coffee — no juice :0(

Word of caution about the Dine Arounds.. be careful of your dinner companions — some of them run off before the bill comes and under tip — bad karma for librarians…. we’re a service industry too — just like waiters!!! plus you annoy your colleagues!!

Jill and Jeff asked me to remind folks of SLA Conference in June of 2006.

okay - gotta go get new buzz.

Liz Laney was a good speaker this morning — find her blog by searching on Google for Liz — she claims to be the third hit.

buzz you later — McBee

reporting from Internet Librarian 2005 Tuesday, Oct 25 2005 

another session that I went to at Internet Librarian was on Library Jargon — very good - the speaker was John Kupersmith — here’s my notes.

Internet Librarian – John Kupersmith

Library Jargon –

1943 – ALA Glossary

1989 - patrons only understand 50% of what Librarians say (Naismith)

50% user success rate for Library websites

why?

Site organization
Graphic Design
Excessive verbiage
TERMINOLOGY

In the physical world – there are environmental cues and social context. Architectural clues, seeing other people doing what you want to be doing. The Web depends upon graphics and text for cues.

www.jkup.net/terms.html

usability testing – 5 users will provide about 80% of the problems on a website.

Problem terms:
Acronyms & brand names Periodical or Serial
Database

Some are just not understood – brand names for example (ProQuest)

Reference means something different
Resources means nothing

Misunderstood –
Library Catalog
Database
e-Journal

Terms that are understood!

Find Books, Find Articles, etc.
Annotated links

Strong attractors – Journal or Services, a search box
Weak or non-attractors – Electronic resources

• Ideal term
• Attractive for the right reasons
• Meningtful to users
• Technically accurate
• Short

Where is the search engine for the books?

Patrons aren’t stupid… but they don’t know our language, don’t user our mental models, they are used to instant results and they’re in a hurry.

Librarians aren’t arrogant, but we have specialized language, we’re contaminated as designers by what we know, we don’t want to dumb-down our sites.

Battle against common sense to educate users.

Best practices:

1. Test user’s understnanding and preferences – use data and share data

2. Avoid using misunderstood terms

3. Use natural language on top level pages (borrowing from other libraries, not ILL)

4. Find Books instead of Catalog, Find Articles instead of “online journals” or ProQuest

5. Use target words – book or article

6. Re-direct if path is Find Journals – provide a redirect for Find Articles

7. Enhance or explain potentially confusing terms – additional words and/or graphics, Mouseovers etc.

8. Be consistent

more later — catching the buzz!!

- McBee

reporting from Internet Librarian 2005 Tuesday, Oct 25 2005 

Hi Folks, I’m reporting from the SLA Booth at the Internet Librarian conference in foggy Monterey California.

Jill and Jeff are wonderful to let me use their connection to do this.!! yea!! they also have great give-aways for new SLA Members

The first speaker yesteday morning was Lee Rainie — here’s my notes from his talk

Internet Librarian – Keynote – Lee Rainie, Pew Internet and American Life Projects

Parallels w/ advent of the printing press (Elizabeth Eisenstein)

½ of adults use broadband at home
2/3 of adults have broadband access somewhere

The Internet is becoming invisible – part of the woodwork – means the value of the Internet is growing.

1/5 of adults have never used the Internet.

Three types of users currently (not the connected or not connected as in the past)

Cold tepid Hot
Isolated/indifferent on/off regularly connected
20% of users happy w/ dial-up multiple features plugged in
not looking for more
Internet skills etc.

Teens – 12 – 17 year olds – instant messages, cellphones, text messages

Multi-tasking – 8 hours of media interaction w/in 6 hours or real time.
“The conversation never ends”

Politics – 75 million Americans used the Internet to get political Information in 2004 election cycle.

Internet users w/ same demographics are more likely to vote.

Internet-saavy users encounter both sides of issues just through their increased Internet use.

Use of Internet @ major moments

Health-related issues for self or others, college searching, marriage, divorce

A friend following a divorce began dating and used three different online Services and his ex-wife was given as a perfect match on three of them!

Increased use of the Internet – French toilets that have IP addresses and can notify when they need to be cleaned. – a new meaning for IP address
Ref-ids in golf balls and GI dog tags to located bodies on a battlefield
Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson – the long-tail. We are no longer in a “hit-driven” era, 40% of sales on Net-flix and Amazon are from the combined sales along the long tail of the sails arc.

Not mass-media, but me-media

Howard Rhinegold (sp?) Smart Mobs – organized by text messages, cellphone calls etc. during the IMF/World Bank meetings in Seattle a few years back.

Rainie and daughter attended a Broadway matinee and george and Barbara Bush came in – by the time the show was over there was a protest outside the theatre, a counter demonstration, and police – all tipped off by the under-25 crowd at the theatre who whipped out their cameras and sent photos or text messages to friends.

Joseph Piper (sp?) Leisure: the basics of culture.

Not idleness, but stillness as preparation prior to embarking on the real world.

Librarians can be key to providing that balance. Libraries have reading rooms that promotes reflection.

Learn how and when to turn off the machines and contemplate.

Hello World - catch the buzzzz Thursday, Oct 20 2005 

Another blogger takes on the world! Hey folks - I’m aiming to use this blog to give my perspective on the world.

I am a Librarian for a US government agency - but my opinions expressed here are certainly my own!

Next week I’ll be heading out to sunny Monterey, California for the Internet Librarian Conference and will continue to blog from there.

Say hi - and catch the buzzzzz