Library Buzz

Slides for David Lee King’s presentation

David Lee King asked the question, Why make time for Web 2.0?

Someone said, It’s fun! but that doesn’t convince management.

There’s the argument to reach out to younger patrons but he points out that lots of people are using Web 2.0; there are communities and blogs on eBay and on Amazon where people post reviews and comments. Most news sites USA Today, etc. allow for reader comments on stories.

This isn’t just the under 30 crowd.

Teach older users how to use Flickr to share photos of their grandchildren. Show small business owners how to do research on competitors.

Make time for training.

Demonstrate the low cost of much of this.

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Gina Milsap talked about Shared leadership.

Utopian Library blog of this talk -

Barriers to using technology implementing Library 2.0

• it’s a fad
• no time
• no staff
• overwhelmed
• afraid
• too many questions
• money

We need to support innovation:

Library Director 2.0 - (from Tasha Saecker)

Less hierarchy (more flexible)
Trust your staff
Transparency
Involve all levels of staff
Explain decisions fully & honestly
Structure for quick decisions and implementation
Train staff
Allow time for play
LISTEN
Offer structures for feedback
Face time with staff is important

Library Director 2.1 - from Gina

Focus on customers
Put your money where the mouth is
Avoid one-size fits all
Treat staff as customers - advocate for them
Build your leadership team
Understand the context of the community
Decisions based on data
There is no turf
No passive/aggressive behavior - this always gets a laugh at conferences

Our libraries are about people not stuff it isn’t just about the tools

When Gina became a library director she met with staff in small groups and asked the following questions.

1. What are the top 5 things that we need to preserve in our libraries? Why are they important?
2. What makes you feel valued?
3. What do you most hope the library director will do?
4. What are you most concerned that the library director will do?

Key points to remember:

• Customer Service
• Valuing Staff
• Programs
• Leadership
• Organizational Development

In talking to people after this presentation - I was amazed by the number of people who commented that it only takes one really bad boss to make one appreciate the truly good ones.

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See their article in the April, 2008 Library Journal

It used to be that companies etc. released information in a very controlled way – from official spokesmen, the president or CEO or the like. Information was released in planned ways through regular issuances or speeches or press conferences.

Nowadays information comes from throughout organizations in planned and unplanned ways through blogs and other releases.

Communicating with staff:

Open conversation is important conversation in all directions.

Visit the frontlines regularly administrators have to be customers too,

Talking about public libraries administrators need to get out and visit their branch locations to see what is going on what is working etc.

Cross train staff so that people can help out in other areas and grow into new roles.

Consider the role of anonymity for employees and patrons to comment and provide feedback.

Don’t ask for staff input if you’re not going to use it.

Speak with a human voice.

See Remaining Relevant for another blog of this session.

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Mary Ellen Bates, Bates Information Services

Mary Ellen is a great speaker and independent researcher. I have attended her talks many times and always leave with new tips, tricks and tools.

For my purposes the most promising are the last two!

1. AltSearch Engines - www.altsearchengines.com

   Blog of alternative and niche search engines

2. Keotag - www.keotag.com

   Search across Web 2.0 sites: Technorati, Deli.cio.us, Twitter, etc.

3. MSN Product reviews - www.search.live.com

   Search for a specific brand, compiles reviews from other sources

4. Google’s improved timelines - www.news.google.com/archivesearch

   Readable page, easy to scan, identify trends

5. Watch for blended search results

   Lower precision, but good fro obscure topics

6. Search Crystal - www.searchcrystal.com

   Meta-search on steroids! Compare search queries, shows overlap between terms

7. Carrot2 - www.carrot2.org

   Clustering on demand, choice of algorithms, choice of search engines

8. Loki toolbar

   Find location-dependent content, based on the IP addresses of nearby Wi-fi signals. Find ATM, Starbucks, etc.

9. Customize Google for Firefox browsers
10. Google’s Experimental Search - www.labs.google.com

    Add view:timeline or view:info to the search query to see results in a timeline or highlighted on a map.

11. SearchMash - www.searchmash.com

    Unbranded Google search - results sorted by web pages, blogs, images, Wikipedia, infinite scroll

12. Google date limiting

    Use advanced search screen or create your own by adding the following to the Search Results URL (in the browser location bar)
    &as_qdr=dn where n is the number of days

13. DoubleTrust - www.doubletrust.net

    Compare Google and Yahoo search results - set a preference for one or the other to demonstrate overlap as well as what one misses that the other finds.

14. Prefer - www.search.live.com

    Add prefer:word to query - ranks these search results higher

15. Misspellings

    www.adlab.mns.com/keymut/

16. Ask’s maps - www.maps.ask.com

    Both driving and walking directions

17. Exalead - www.exalead.com

    Allows for near/n operator - (solar or sun) NEAR/3 power

18. Exalead - truncation

    Wild-card - colou?r, globali.ation and other strategies

19. Quick answer suggestions from Google, Ask, Yahoo and MSN
20. Gigablast - www.gigablast.com

    Limit to multiple sites, clustering and ranking tools

21. SnapSearch - www.snap.com

    Based on Google - easy to navigate and visual search results

22. PageBull www.pagebull.com

    Metasearch engine, entirely visual

23. Factbites - www.factbites.com

    Good for dinding in-depth sites quickly

24. TextRunner - www.cs.washington.edu/research/textrunner

    Information mining, looks for assertions

25. NationMaster - www.nationmaster.com

    Source for national stats, graphical info, data from WHO, CIA World Factbook, World Bank and others

26. TouchGraph - www.touchgraph.com

    Finds relationships among URLs - uses Google’s similar pages function

27. Podcast lectures from various universities

    Yale, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Johns Hopkins

28. Kosmix - www.kosmix.com

    Vertical search engine - excellent clustering, but limited at the moment to Health, Travel and Cars

29. LOUIS - Library of Unified Information Sources - www.louisdb.org

    Searchable documents from

    • Congressional Record, reports, hearings
    • Federal Register
    • Presidential Documents
    • GAO Reports
    • Bills & Resolutions
30. Full text Supreme Court cases - www.bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/US/

    Incomplete at present - but will contain all US Supreme Court Cases

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Libraries Solve Problems

Computers in Libraries
Keynote - Monday, April 7, 2008

(more…)

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Yesterday I again attended the LexisNexis Library Week Government Librarian Breakfast Seminar. It was again held in the National Press Club - a great location!!

This year the presenter was Karen Huffman, Manager, Knowledge Inititiatives, at the National Geographic Society. There are links to her presentation from Marie Kaddell’s Government Info Pro blog.

The event was another opportunity to meet up with federal librarians. Both Karen and Marie put in plugs for SLA’s Government Information Division. DGI Chair, Eileen Deegan and Chair-elect Chris Zammarelli were both there to meet and greet.

The best thing about Karen’s presentation was that we finally had a show-and-tell on what wiki’s are and how we can use them. She has her Library’s website running on a wiki platform. Suddenly this seems like something that can be done.

Now that I’m back from the Seminar I’ll take some time to review Karen’s slides and look at her notes - and I’ll also want to look over the Best Practices document that Marie has compiled. It is a great resource for planning your own library’s marketing efforts.

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