Adapt­ing Library Ser­vices to the Needs of Gamers – Chad Boeninger

started out show­ing Lego Star Wars
one of the great things about it is that it encour­ages explo­ration within the game
get used to the inter­face by prob­ing the environment

games also encour­age immer­sion, not just explo­ration
showed some video of Res­i­dent Evil 4
not just shoot­ing things, but also lots of times when you have to make deci­sions to do things (buy wepaons, make adjust­ments, etc.)
the immer­sion here is that the player has con­trol of their own experience

can also essen­tially play “Bar­bie” by cus­tomiz­ing avatars
showed video of cus­tomiz­ing his player in Mad­den, to the point where his name is on the back of his shirt

showed some video from the game Bully
showed some God of War
here’s how gam­ing encour­ages learn­ing while doing
– you basi­cally get thrown right into the game where you start mash­ing but­tons to fig­ure out what to do
the PS2 con­troller has 16 but­tons that you learn how to use within the first 20 min­utes of the game (open hatches, etc.)
you fig­ure out the sequences pretty quickly
learn through trial and error
as the game play pro­gresses, we learn new things and have to adapt new skills to get to the next level because the game gets harder

so how can we inte­grate these kinds of things into libraries?
we try to cre­ate immer­sive envi­ron­ments, encour­age learn­ing by doing, and encour­age exploration

peo­ple grew up in video games, and as a result, they maneu­ver dif­fer­ently
part of our role is to help them adapt to our stuff, while the other part is for us to adapt to them

what you never hear in the main­stream media is how frus­trat­ingly dif­fi­cult these games are
research is hard, too

(some of this from “The Kids Are Alright” — Mitchell Wade)

we need new nomen­cla­ture
infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy
ref­er­ence
reserve
cat­a­log
data­base
peri­od­i­cal
bib­li­o­graphic instruction

job secu­rity for us, but mean­ing­less to every­one else

we need con­sis­tent inter­faces
why can’t our inter­faces be as intu­itive and easy to learn in the first 5 min­utes as they are in video games?
what does our feed­back give users?
pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive?
how do we cre­ate envi­ron­ments that attract and engage these folks?

the library as immer­sive space
make learning/information com­mons more
– invit­ing
– wire­less
etc.

cus­tomiz­able interfaces

learn­ing while doing
incor­po­rate hands-on instruc­tional expe­ri­ences
must be rel­e­vant and timely
give con­text — don’t just do BI to do teach peo­ple something

need smarter cat­a­logs with point-of-need help
give them instant help
– best options right now are IM and Meebo

help them help them­selves via a site map or online FAQ

doesn’t really have a con­clu­sion but the dis­cus­sion about how to do this is important

Randy Chris­tensen

threw a bean bag into the audi­ence and asked the per­son who caught it to come up on stage
that per­son then threw the bean­bag to some­one else, who came up on stage
did this until he had 12 peo­ple up front
played “Inter­net Librar­ian Chase,” based on IL2006 infor­ma­tion
“what are the advan­tages of a fed­er­ated search“
“name one way you can make a library web­site more user-friendly?“
etc.

walked around the audi­ence ask­ing ques­tions about how they could incor­po­rate gam­ing into library services

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Aaron Schmidt, Adina Lerner, John Bly­berg, Carol Bean, Allan M. Kleiman, Glenn Peter­son, Mar­i­lyn Turner

ques­tion: book­space page is great, looks great; I won­der about these lists, because blogs are self-correcting, but the lists seem to be more sta­tic; how do you know the lists are doing their job and accom­plish­ing what you want them to accom­plish?
answer: glenn — recently noticed that on one of the lists, some­one said “here are the titles that I like about such and such and if you have favorites, com­ment below,” but we don’t have offer com­ments on the lists; so there are ways we can make the lists more organic and dynamic
Mar­i­lyn — there’s a list called “all pink book cov­ers,” so you can’t really cor­rect everything

ques­tion from allan: we haven’t been very suc­cess­ful to get our staff to adapt to 2.0, although we’re play­ing with sites; how did you actu­ally moti­vate your staff — with or with­out a stick — to blog? ref­er­ence staff don’t see this as part of their job
answer: Mar­i­lyn — can’t pre­tend we haven’t had peo­ple kick­ing and scream­ing, but feels that if you can snag new librar­i­ans who aren’t afraid of doing these things and see this as part of their job, try to har­ness them; had trou­ble get­ting peo­ple to con­tribute con­tent for the web back in 1996; saw that staff started to rely on resources their col­leagues were main­tain­ing, which helped; some­thing col­lab­o­ra­tive finally hap­pened, but not sure it can be described eas­ily; they use sta­tis­tics to show usage of the web resources; staff will update their blog if you tell them you are going to fea­ture it on the home page; some­thing is mak­ing it real for them, but it didn’t hap­pen overnight
Glenn — have had their intranet for a long time, which helps, because they were able to start their in a con­trolled and safe environment

ques­tion: why did you use cold­fu­sion instead of php?
answer: we selected CF in the mid-1990s, one of the few devel­op­men­tal lan­guages at the time; rapid devel­op­ment envi­ron­ment, can use dreamweaver with it, easy to learn, sim­i­lar to HTML in the way it uses tags; might have made a dif­fer­ent deci­sion of mak­ing it later

ques­tion: when I go home, my cowork­ers will ask the “what if” about user-generated con­tent — how you deal with the bad stuff, who deals with it, etc.
answer: john — it’s a good ques­tion; need to under­stand it could hap­pen, but can have a plan for how to deal with it; you won’t get a flood of par­tic­i­pa­tion to begin with; aaron — noted that you can mod­er­ate com­ments so that they have to be approved by the per­son who is wor­ried about this hap­pen­ing
glenn — com­ments go live on their site unless they get trapped by their “naughty word” fil­ter (eg, “title” gets blocked because of the first three let­ters — about one of these a day gets trapped and has to be approved); trapped com­ments are sent to a group of employ­ees via email every cou­ple of days — can click on a link to follow-up

ques­tion: NJ library where user-generated com­ments are approved before going live; has never seen a prob­lem; if any­thing, peo­ple think they’re reserv­ing a book; have a home-generated chat room for book dis­cus­sions, staff meet­ings, etc.; can see the num­ber of lurk­ers, which is pretty high — they don’t have any­thing to say; in the web 2.0 world, really likes the SOPAC, how do you get the lurk­ers to par­tic­i­pate? he recently put up a “sug­gest a new title” box on their web­site, and it’s been a flood; thinks all of these peo­ple never thought to par­tic­i­pate or con­tribute until they saw that box
answer: john — by lurk­ers, you’re really talk­ing about peo­ple who are not pre­dis­posed to using those types of ser­vices; no bet­ter way to get some­one to par­tic­i­pate than to make them mad, but in the end, you really need to cre­ate incen­tive for them to par­tic­i­pate; eg, if you put in 10 reviews, we’ll waive your fines; the end game is to build a com­mu­nity around the core ele­ments of the social soft­ware, get that net­work effect rolling
allan — one of the issues that came up a few years ago is that the ILS ven­dors looked at 2.0 and were going to incor­po­rate all of these fea­tures, but that’s come and gone so we have to imple­ment it; it’s the ven­dors who really need to be the ones work­ing on this, rather than us recre­at­ing the wheel

ques­tion: how do you mea­sure and report value? we can all agree that there is inher­ently good value in these things, but how do you mea­sure that value and report it out so that it is use­ful for decision-makers who are not librar­i­ans?
answer: aaron — at a very basic level, you can take your web­site sta­tis­tics and look at hits from other sites where you have a pres­ence
john — it’s also impor­tant to remem­ber that you can look at met­rics but your ulti­mate goal is enhanc­ing the user expe­ri­ence in a way that changes the face of librar­i­an­ship
allan — has been doing work­shops around the state about the value of libraries using a web-based cal­cu­la­tor that high­lights the value based on your usage; gives annual reports to cus­tomers
Mar­i­lyn — it’s impor­tant to put mod­esty aside and send com­ments up the chain; she is con­stantly sur­prised how many users leave pos­i­tive com­ments on the site; leave mod­esty aside and pro­mote those comments

ques­tion from Michael: can each of you tell us a chal­lenge you’ve faced and how you over­came it?
answer: aaron — he’s the direc­tor of a small pub­lic library with a small bud­get and lim­ited staff, and the social soft­ware they use has been of immense help to them; was able to get a decent web­site going using free blog­ging soft­ware, staff col­lab­o­rates with google docs, etc.
adina — is try­ing to find ways to bring more peo­ple into the library and offer more chal­leng­ing classes, so at the end of next month, she will be offer­ing a new class on web-based image edit­ing soft­ware
john — often­times, we reach for the stars and we climb the high­est peak we can find, and that leads to fail­ure because we’re not focus­ing on the bedrock of our ser­vices (the back­end, the foun­da­tion), so rec­og­niz­ing that fact we can’t inno­vate for a year because we need to lay the foun­da­tion and put the ground­work in is a way of acknowl­edg­ing our lim­i­ta­tions; so when you present a project that really works (like SOPAC), that’s a cul­mi­na­tion of not just that project, but also lay­ing the foun­da­tion
Carol — when she was first hired, she was the only one who under­stood the prob­lems of hav­ing to get a mouse to teach how to use one; she just went out and did things (buy­ing a mouse); when other staff didn’t like what she did, other staff pitched in and did some­thing dif­fer­ent, which helped move things for­ward; if oth­ers aren’t doing it, just do it your­self
allan — the biggest resource we have is our staff, and the biggest hin­drance to going to the next level is our staff, so our biggest chal­lenge is to get our staff to real­ize that their jobs have changed and they are all now tech­nol­ogy spe­cial­ists; he him­self has this chal­lenge because he tries to stay out in front of his staff, which seems impos­si­ble; the chal­lenge is what we are as librar­i­ans to keep up with tech­nol­ogy
glenn — our biggest chal­lenge is with staff, not the pub­lic; patrons don’t have high expec­ta­tions for library tech­nol­ogy; it’s a great chal­lenge to have when peo­ple fig­ure out what tech­nol­ogy can do for them, but then we have to man­age expec­ta­tions for what we can do; they see the magic in front of them but they don’t always have an under­stand­ing of what it takes to make that hap­pen; so empha­siz­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion (what projects they are work­ing on, what infor­ma­tion they need to make some­thing hap­pen, etc.)
Mar­i­lyn — her biggest chal­lenge has been to be at the table of system-wide plan­ning; because they’re not in each build­ing, peo­ple plan with­out con­sid­er­ing the web ser­vices com­po­nents; her staff goes to a lot of meet­ings in order to con­tribute to these dis­cus­sions and be part of things

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Bookspace.org — Glenn Peter­son, Mar­i­lyn Turner (Hen­nepin County Library)

Mar­i­lyn

book site went live on valentine’s day
con­tri­bu­tions from staff and read­ers have been key
hen­nepin county is a county of read­ers
– on aver­age, every sub­ur­ban HC res­i­dent checked out 17 books, DVDs, and CDs in 2006
– twice the national average

wanted to max­i­mize this when redesign­ing their site
– wanted to bring together rel­e­vant resources for a par­tic­u­lar genre or sub­ject
– to allow librar­i­ans to eas­ily con­tribute con­tent with­out need any pro­gram­ming knowledge

when they came up with the name “book­space,” it was con­ceived as a true space where peo­ple could read, share, and learn
domain name was owned by a young adult librar­ian in mis­souri who was never able to use it so she gave it to them to use

lat­est blog post title appears on the home page
email newslet­ter that goes out every other month
fea­tured read­ers list
find a good book

who is work­ing on the site?
– coör­di­na­tor
– work­group of 5 librar­i­ans
– con­trib­u­tors (30 librar­i­ans)
— 2 librar­i­ans on each genre page team

easy to use tools for the librar­i­ans, all form-based on the web
they help each other to show new blog authors how easy it is
these are not vol­un­teer activ­i­ties, which is impor­tant
– this is part of your job and part of your per­for­mance expec­ta­tion
– it’s become an expec­ta­tion over the last few years that their librar­i­ans will add con­tent to the web

Glenn

social fea­tures
– user com­ments on books and other titles
— right now there are 234 com­ments on the final Harry Pot­ter book; com­ments started on this title while it was still on order
– blogs, where users can also com­ment
– book­lists
– list top con­trib­u­tors of com­ments
– “It’s Alive“
– user pro­files
— more than just screen names
— bring together user’s com­ments and book­lists on their pro­file page
— also show what they have checked out as a wall of books (“what they’re reading”)

look­ing ahead
– new ways to con­nect users
— users who are read­ing x are also read­ing y
— face­book “wall“
— show user’s “friends”

chal­lenges
– con­trol issues

geek stuff
– database-driven
– RSS every­where
– Cold­Fu­sion (or ASP, PHP, etc.)

take­aways
– draw on library staff
– empower your users (they want to add con­tent, espe­cially your younger users)
– cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for serendip­ity
– let users interact

slides at http://hclib.org/extranet/

John: The Social Catalog

the trans­for­ma­tive library
based on “The Expe­ri­ence Econ­omy” book -
ser­vices, goods = 1.0
trans­for­ma­tion puts ser­vices, goods, and expe­ri­ence (par­tic­i­pa­tion) together into a whole = 2.0
the media ecol­ogy is chang­ing rapidly
the way we con­duct busi­ness means we need to change the way we do things

cre­ate an expe­ri­ence in the library itself to offer a trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence for the user
the social cat­a­log is one way to do this
a vital interim step to wher­ever we end up going

3 social cat­a­log envi­ron­ments
1. pseudo-social
— author­ity pre­sented as col­lab­o­ra­tive (ie Encore); sub­ject head­ings as tag cloud
— there’s no feed­back loop, though, no real col­lab­o­ra­tive expe­ri­ence, and not really social
2. syn­di­cated social
— 3rd party data (ie Library­Thing for Libraries)
— the results you get are gen­er­ally well-formed and almost always out­strip the use­ful­ness of sub­ject head­ings
— but get a homo­ge­neous blend of infor­ma­tion from a par­tic­u­lar record
3. indi­vid­u­ally social
— user-direct and self-contained (ie Hen­nepin, SOPAC)
— run into other lim­i­ta­tions, such as crit­i­cal mass of content

showed Michi­gan State University’s imple­men­ta­tion of Encore
– tag cloud, AJAX
– not really a social sys­tem, though, even though inter­face ele­ments are indica­tive of social sites

showed Dan­bury Library’s imple­men­ta­tion of Library­Thing for Libraries
– tags, but still no real social elements

showed Ann Arbor’s SOPAC
– users tak­ing advan­tage of the social ele­ments are prob­a­bly teens, prob­a­bly a hand­ful of them (so have to be care­ful your data analy­sis isn’t skewed)

you need to ask your­self…
– do we want non-authoritative (user-generated) meta­data asso­ci­ated with a record dis­play?
— only your insti­tu­tion can decide
— author­i­ta­tive and non-authoritative infor­ma­tion can co-exist
– if you include folk­son­omy, do you:
— want it to orig­i­nate from syn­di­cated data?
— reflect your com­mu­nity?
— if you don’t have the con­tent, how do you pro­vide the incen­tive to use the sys­tem? and if you don’t have incen­tive to use the sys­tem, how do you have the con­tent?
– what kind of devel­op­ment is involved?

the net­work effect

ques­tion: how do you prime the pump for com­ments?
answer: glenn — thinks we’ll see a phased approach in pop­u­lar­ity; needs to build, not there from day one; their sta­tis­tics show that peo­ple are more inter­ested in read­ing than con­tribut­ing, but thinks that will change over time; Mar­i­lyn: Glenn has put the oppor­tu­nity to com­ment in places she hadn’t thought of (where nor­mally it would be an email); have done a lot of PR with prizes when they intro­duce these types of things; can put your name in to win after you comment

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- Allan M. Kleiman (Old Bridge Pub­lic Library)

inter­net is not gray yet
“while you were whale watch­ing, some of us were watch­ing the salmon spawn“
whale watch­ing = myspace, face­book
salmon spawn = cranky & other senior sites
sites that are spawn­ing and going upstream to die
what has spawned is some­thing “new” and “excit­ing” in social net­work­ing
com­par­ing the whale and the salmon is interesting

when peo­ple think of senior sites on the web, they only think of AARP, but that’s not really a social net­work­ing site
most of all, you need to share today’s infor­ma­tion with your col­leagues and the boomers and older adults who use your library

the num­bers are con­fus­ing
22% of seniors 65 and older use the inter­net (Pew)
fastest grow­ing seg­ment of inter­net users are those 85+
– well, if you have no one 85+ using the inter­net and then you do, it’s the fastest-growing segment

cur­rently 35 mil­lion older adults and by 2020 the older adults pop­u­la­tion will dou­ble
big busi­ness in devel­op­ing & “hook­ing” the baby boomers now
they’re try­ing to hook them into social net­work­ing sites, but how? no idea because don’t see any ads, fly­ers, etc.
older adults are not attracted to these lifestyle web­sites
sites that are con­nected to another orga­ni­za­tion are doing well, while inde­pen­dent sites are not doing so well
they all have the same col­ors and design and look the same after awhile

Senior­Net was the first orga­ni­za­tion to develop senior sites around the US, but you had to pay to join and that usu­ally doesn’t work with how libraries oper­ate
Allan’s library is work­ing with Senior­Net to expand their ser­vices into libraries
their web­site is good for view­ing struc­tured online learn­ing; they have book clubs, blogs, etc.
every­one else’s site looks the same, but they did it first

Third Age was the “first” social net­work­ing (learn­ing) site in 1997

all of these sites are intended for upper to mid­dle class, white, women
no com­pa­ra­ble site for men yet

Eons site
they know noth­ing about their users’ lifestyles and don’t mar­ket to them
focus on peo­ple, fun, love, money, body, lifepath, obits (ha!), games, travel
was founded by Monster.com CEO Jeff Tay­lor, but he’s not a boomer so he doesn’t get it
most of the boomer web­sites are look­ing at peo­ple with money, hop­ing you’ll click on com­pa­nies who can help you travel, invest money, etc.
Eons has $32 mil­lion invest­ment
half of their staff was let go, though

begin­ning to see the col­lapse of the new hope of social net­work­ing sites
let the com­pe­ti­tion begin
if a site is not allied with an orga­ni­za­tion, it is run­ning on ven­ture cap­i­tal invest­ments hop­ing to reap rewards

what is use­ful?
– more friendly ver­sions of myspace and face­book
– “Eons, Rezoom, Mul­ti­ply (a fancier Flickr; don’t even men­tion money, life, etc.; only site that shows peo­ple of dif­fer­ent ages and col­ors), Maya’s Mom, Boomj, and Boomer­town. They look like Face­book — with wrin­kles.” NYT 9/12/2007
— also said “old peo­ple are sticky,” mean­ing brand-loyal
but boomers are not brand loyal

new search engine — http://cranky.com/
it’s an out­growth of eons
found the 5000 most pop­u­lar web­sites among a group of 500,000 web users aged 45 and older and rated each site
pos­si­bly based on ask.com’s search engine
about once or twice a day, they change the rank­ings on the home page
#1 search was about sex
which isn’t sur­pris­ing, any good social net­work­ing sites for seniors will include com­pan­ion­ship
(at his library, they’re request­ing a speed dat­ing night for seniors!)
also high in rank­ings
– longevity cal­cu­la­tor
– sudoku
– eat healthy
– jobs after retire­ment
– wall­pa­pers
– online dat­ing
– retire­ment com­mu­nity
– work from home

the search here is non­threat­en­ing and eas­ier to use, eas­ier to read because of lower start­ing set
results are com­pa­ra­ble to yahoo
almost 80% of what he picks up on cranky dupli­cates what he gets on google
they only dis­play 4 results per page
head­ing = cRANKy
because it’s con­nected with eons, their con­tent is listed and linked to at the bot­tom of each page

what’s new out there?
eldr.com — mis­sion is to help baby boomers and their aging par­ents deal with the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties of aging by pro­vid­ing the most use­ful thought-provoking and trusted infor­ma­tion avail­able any­where
one issue is out
web­site looks the same as the other senior sites
believes this will stay around because there is a com­ple­men­tary mag­a­zine and because it was started by a builder of homes for older adults; he wants to give back to the com­mu­nity for the peo­ple he works with

oth­ers
– redhatsociety.com; 40,000 chap­ters in US/worldwide; wear red hats, pur­ple dress
— “all my life I’ve done for you, now it’s my turn to do for me“
— another site that’s based on an orga­ni­za­tion
– Boomers! TV: Redefin­ing life after 50
— pro­duc­ing shows on PBS about grow­ing older, retire­ment, etc.; site has a lit­tle social networking

gray­ing of the inter­net is really about blog­ging
AP found that seniors love blog­ging because it helps them keep their minds going, keep your­self up-to-date because you’re ready other blogs, can share life expe­ri­ences, can meet other peo­ple from across the world
in some cases, senior blogs give the authors a bit of fame
3% of seniors in the US have cre­ated a blog
17% have read some­one else’s blog
22% of amer­i­cans aged 65 and older use the inter­net (1 in 5)

The Age­less Project
a web­site that lists blogs or web­sites of peo­ple in order of their birth year; there are 2 sites for peo­ple over age 90!
(sites with no com­mer­cial con­tent)
Allan’s library is start­ing a blog­ging class next month
will try to mar­ket the blogs of the class participants

so what do we do with all of this infor­ma­tion?
there’s life beyond myspace
– we should show peo­ple Cranky in com­puter class train­ing
– link some of these resources from your library’s web­site (libraries usu­ally link to neg­a­tive sites, whereas social net­work­ing sites are usu­ally pos­i­tive
– join the sites and test them; oth­er­wise you won’t really under­stand what they do
– become a par­tic­i­pant
– add web 2.0 tech­nol­ogy to your web classes
– pro­vide feed­back, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive to the sites

social net­work­ing sites for seniors are here to stay, even if these spe­cific sites don’t survive

things that Old Bridge PL can do that you can, too
– have cre­ated a “senior space,” pos­si­bly the first in the US (users can lis­ten to records)
— phase one set up the area
— phase two is to develop a web 2.0 class­room where seniors can also use com­put­ers on their own
— adding a “let’s try it” lab­o­ra­tory
— adding to their class list based on their Advi­sory Board
– first library to launch Wii for older adults on Novem­ber 9
— teens will teach the older adults to Wii
— plan­ning for a Wii NJ tour­na­ment in spring 2008
– are re-training their librar­i­ans to train 2.0

keep look­ing for infor­ma­tion about what’s going on with older adults and social networking

his pre­sen­ta­tion will be at libraryolderadults.blogspot.com or infolink.org/seniorspaces

ques­tion: you didn’t men­tion AARP, why not?
answer: AARP is still an infor­ma­tional site, not a social net­work­ing site; it’s not the site I think of when I want to go some­where and have fun; I use it a lot and link to it, but doesn’t see it as a true inter­ac­tive site where peo­ple can meet

ques­tion: ABA is look­ing at imple­ment­ing MyABA; do you have point­ers for how to get peo­ple to use these sites?
answer: you’ll have to do a lot of hand-holding and tuto­ri­als; train the assis­tants (para­le­gals, sec­re­taries, etc.) to help them

ques­tion: do you know if web­mas­ters at these sites are talk­ing to boomers and seniors?
answer: doesn’t think so because the sites don’t reflect these groups; that’s why we need to join these things and com­ment on them — help them change the con­tent to make it more use­ful for us and for the community

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- Adina Lerner (Santa Mon­ica PL), Alan D’Souza (San Fran­cisco PL), Carol Bean (BeanWorks)

Adina

“review the pew” — A Typol­ogy of Infor­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­ogy Users report
we’re not going to help the élite tech users, want to try for mid­dle of the road users, but really want to help the 49% with “few tech assets“
have to know your community’s demo­graph­ics
census.gov only gives you 2000 num­bers, which may not reflect what’s going on now
need to know your local resources, too

locat­ing stu­dents
– lis­ten to your patron requests
– cre­ate a sur­vey (they did a “com­puter classes ques­tion­naire“
– ask patrons to sub­mit ideas to a Sug­ges­tion Box

com­mu­nity out­reach
– appeal to niche groups, such as par­ents want­ing to help chil­dren with home­work online (offer a class on home­work help for par­ents)
– offer health-related search­ing class using your data­bases for older patrons

bring­ing new skills to old hands
can the 20% mid­dle of the road users be tempted?
– man­ag­ing files/folders
– dig­i­tal cam­era skills — using free sources such as Flickr, Pix­e­nate, Pic­nik, Snip­shot, Slide
— they found that 49% of their users had dig­i­tal cam­eras, even though they might not have com­put­ers at home
– eBay skills
— they’re not legally allowed to offer classes on ebay because of lia­bil­ity issues, but they found cer­ti­fied ebay uni­ver­sity train­ers to do the ses­sions in their labs
– inter­net secu­rity issues
— help them under­stand about not using IE, virus control

you have to acknowl­edge your lim­i­ta­tions, both of your library and your patrons
– hard to do Sec­ond Life in 90 min­utes and you may not have band­width
– lack of reli­able access to com­put­ers both in library and at home due to lim­i­ta­tion of space and funds
– lack of trans­porta­tion or mobil­ity of the patron — go to a senior cen­ter, etc.

at what point will infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy become a basic skill, sim­i­lar to read­ing a news­pa­per or a book, nav­i­gat­ing a library cat­a­log, or using an ATM?

pre­sen­ta­tion will be on slideshare (search on her name)

Alan — Non-English Classes at SFPL

The Foun­da­tion
– mis­sion state­ment
– have to present staff who look and sound like our com­mu­ni­ties
– lit­er­a­ture & sig­nage should reflect wel­com­ing atmos­phere, not just the “No’s“
– strong col­lec­tions for pop­u­la­tions
– web­site is in two addi­tional lan­guages, chi­nese and span­ish
— have an “eth­nic ser­vices com­mit­tee,” although they rely on the indi­vid­ual branches to do the pro­gram­ming
— book club in russ­ian and span­ish
– offer com­puter classes in chi­nese (can­tonese and man­darin), japan­ese (don’t really offer these any­more), russ­ian, and span­ish
— key­boards not in the native lan­guages (such as chi­nese) is an issue
— they have a class in chi­nese wikipedia
— part­nered with the senior­net peo­ple for a 4-week course that takes seniors from turn­ing on your com­puter, to man­ag­ing fold­ers, to man­ag­ing email; now they are ask­ing for how to upload pho­tos
inter­est­ingly, atten­dance num­bers across all lan­guages are down, though

have a “book a librar­ian” pro­gram where patrons can sched­ule a con­sul­ta­tion with them about any­thing at all
need staff inter­ested in teach­ing these things

recruit­ing train­ers
– staff & vol­un­teers
– lan­guage flu­ency
– tech­nol­ogy flu­ency
– enthusiasm

train­ing the trainer
– InfoPeo­ple
– Senior­Net (still use their les­son plans, even though they don’t part­ner with them any­more)
– Men­tor­ing — main way they train train­ers now
– File shar­ing — share hand­outs, les­son plans, etc. this way
– Feedback

The Num­bers for 2006/2007
– 3752 classes taught
– 450 atten­dees for non-english classes were taught in 50 classes
– >45 is the aver­age age of atten­dees
– had a 100-year old Chi­nese woman attend a class!

hur­dles
– facil­i­ties — ren­o­va­tions, adding meet­ing rooms
– tech­nol­ogy — try­ing to upgrade, adding wire­less, try­ing to use lap­tops, but that means issues such as smaller screens, touch­pads, etc.; IT locks down all of the com­put­ers, which is another prob­lem
– patrons — skillset is very, very low; requires a lot of patience; hand-eye coör­di­na­tion issues
– time & money — go for a lot of grants

over­all, though, peo­ple are very, very grate­ful for these services

Carol — Make the Con­nec­tion: Tech­nol­ogy Train­ing for the Older Generation

what she’s learned in 6 years of cre­at­ing train­ing for this group
– phys­i­cal effects of aging (cataracts and declined vision, arthri­tis, neural noise, increased sen­si­tiv­ity to cold, decreas­ing hear­ing, etc.)
– cog­ni­tive effects (increased dis­tractabil­ity, neural noise, etc.)

solu­tions include adap­tive tech­nol­ogy (move the screen closer, get glasses for com­put­ers, use track mice)
– they set res­o­lu­tion of screens to 400x800 res­o­lu­tion
– adap­tive train­ing techniques

North County Regional Library’s approach — mou­s­ing tuto­r­ial
begin­ning com­puter classes (Get­ting Started Series)

mou­s­ing tuto­r­ial assumes noth­ing and is pro­gres­sive
– includes instruc­tion on com­mon expe­ri­ence with a com­puter
– includes instruc­tion on phys­i­cal prob­lems using a mouse
– and it’s *fun*

Get­ting Started Classes
– went from 4 to 5
– designed to get older adults com­fort­able on the com­puter
– own­ing a com­puter is not required
– web-based

Class 1 — mou­s­ing
Class 2 — the browser
Class 3 — web forms
Class 4 — sign them up for web-based email, send an email
Class 5 — how to read email, more about email

classes are small trainer inten­sive, don’t last more than an hour max because their eyes glaze over after that
offered in the morn­ing, no longer than 3 days apart (after 48 hours, they’ll lose the infor­ma­tion if they don’t use/build on it)

classes teach only what they need to know with step-by-step instruc­tions
make sure steps and pages are num­bered
hand­outs should use a large, easy-to-read font
train­ers speak slowly, with clear enun­ci­a­tion, and use unam­bigu­ous terms
stu­dents are encour­aged and val­i­dated fre­quently to boost their self-confidence

prospec­tive stu­dents are inter­viewed by the train­ers to be sure they belong in the classes; makes sure every­one is at the same level, too
if they are moti­vated, they can learn it

out­comes
– <5% drop out
– <3% retake the course
– <99% have positive responses/comments
many go on to take reg­u­lar classes at the library

there will always be some that fall through the cracks no mat­ter what you do

can see the mou­s­ing around tuto­r­ial in eng­lish at http://pbclibrary.org/mousing/

all class mate­ri­als are at http://esnips.com/users/ncrlab in word format

how does it feel to be these peo­ple — http://grouper.com/

ques­tion: as part of your decision-making process or pub­lic­ity efforts, is there an out­reach com­po­nent at all, not just on your sites and loca­tions? do you net­work with other groups to pub­li­cize these ser­vices?
answer: Alan — lan­guage librar­i­ans put up fly­ers in the eth­nic super­mar­kets, etc. but we strug­gle with this; have not yet done a ses­sion at a facil­ity that isn’t ours

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- Eleni Gogas and Donna Fed­dern, Escon­dido Pub­lic Library

Eleni:

About Escon­dido PL
– medium-sized library with no pre­vi­ous intranet
– city main­tains sites and servers
– just used a net­work drive in the past
they have an awe­some trad­ing card for the library

Phase 1 — pre-wiki
– net­work drive issues
– infor­ma­tion on the drive was very old
– took 15 min­utes to search for some­thing on the drive
– city intranet was too for­mal
– wanted to improve inter­nal km; many employ­ees are approach­ing retirement

why a wiki?
– col­lab­o­ra­tion, infor­mal­ity, and trans­parency
– want staff to par­tic­i­pate and get out of the ver­ti­cal struc­ture
– eas­ier to use and find infor­ma­tion
– web man­ager is unable to main­tain two web­sites (bottleneck)

pick­ing a wiki
– WYSIWYG
– free to afford­able
– bet­ter search­ing
– web-based (wiki farm); needed a 3rd party to host it because they don’t have access to the servers
– pass­word pro­tected
– wanted indi­vid­ual staff pro­files, wanted staff to be part of the dis­course and have a face on the site
– easy to setup, use, and learn
– blog­ging

decided to go with JotSpot
– free + matched all cri­te­ria
– key­word search within doc­u­ments
– group direc­to­ries app
– RSS & email reminders

issues with JotSpot
– Google acqui­si­tion (no new users, future?)
– main­tain back­ups on net­work drive
– exist­ing JotSpot help group

other wiki-farm options
– list on wikipedia
– PB Wiki
— they used this for their online ref­er­ence rolodex
– wet­paint
— exam­ple of Nancy Pearl Book Lust wiki
— poten­tial issue that they show google ads, though
– wik­ispot
— they use it for their e-gove ref­er­ence por­tal
— a lit­tle more com­plex, no WYSIWYG editor

other intranet options:
“web con­tent man­age­ment sys­tems” — twiki, joomla
– but require direct access to your server and require programmers

Phase II — wiki setup
– orga­nized wiki: staff needs
– build frame­work
showed screen­shots
– “impor­tant stuff“
– depart­ments
– staff devel­op­ment
– com­mit­tees & boards
– “post it” page where staff can post fun stuff

was dif­fi­cult at first for non-techie staff, but once they were given instruc­tions and train­ing, they caught on and were able to do it

Phase III — train­ing (in process)
– showed off wiki at an all-staff meet­ing
– trained super­vi­sors first to help
– techno­pho­bia: fear of edit­ing web­sites; peo­ple think they can’t edit the pages because it’s per­ma­nent; teach them they can roll­back changes
– let them play — no policies/rules
– use wikis for other library-related work

put out a call on the wiki, with a sign-up sheet on the wiki, vol­un­teer to sign up to write an arti­cle about an author (“author spotlight”)

Phase IV — imple­men­ta­tion (never-ending, really)
– des­ig­nate go-to peo­ple for trou­bleshoot­ing
– develop guide­lines (not so much poli­cies); want it to remain infor­mal; don’t want peo­ple to think they’ll get in trou­ble for post­ing the wrong thing
– dep­tart­ment heads respon­si­ble for their infor­ma­tion
– keep train­ing staff, keep remind­ing them about it in email
– on-going process, think of it in terms of the long term

issues and trou­bleshoot­ing
– bugs: you get what you paid for (free)
– make sure you have back­ups just in case
– fear of change from some staff; just keep encour­ag­ing them
– staff interest/participation
— now set­ting up a com­mit­tee and del­e­gat­ing tasks
– time: more than a year (approx­i­mately)
— have to invest time in set­ting it up, even though it’s easy to use

cool tools
– Good­wid­gets: flash photo wid­gets
– FD’s Flickr Toys slideshow & other photo edit­ing tools
– Wid­get­box: weather, games, news, cal­cul­taros, and way more
– Jing: screenshots/casts from any­thing on yoru desk­top
– stats counter: siteme­ter, etc.

Donna:

some issues they are fac­ing right now
– build­ing ren­o­va­tion
– mov­ing to a “mar­ket­place” model for the library
– chang­ing job descrip­tion
— needed a place to com­mu­ni­cate with staff about all of these things — another rea­son for the wiki
– using the wiki for train­ing, includ­ing RA train­ing
– cre­ated a tuto­r­ial for their online cal­en­dar
— room reserve tuto­ri­als, etc.

really like the blog­ging aspects for brain­storm­ing and shar­ing arti­cles, ideas, etc.
asyn­chro­nous com­mu­ni­ca­tion helps between meet­ings
hasn’t done train­ing yet for para­pro­fes­sional staff, but using a new blog to com­mu­ni­cate with media staff
have a secu­rity alerts blog where they post pic­tures from the sur­veil­lance cameras

why the wiki works for them
– eleni does ref­er­ence, cat­a­loging, and web devel­op­ment, so she can’t be the only per­son respon­si­ble to update the site, so it’s great that every­one can update it now
– staff are excited to post meet­ing min­utes, etc.
– sim­plic­ity works, although they do want to make it a lit­tle flashier
– staff loves search capabilities

for the future, they want to be even more cre­ative about how they use it
don’t like the city’s intranet because they have to wait for the city’s edi­tor to update it
they live in San Diego County and lost 75 homes in the area; many staff were evac­u­ated, were stay­ing with friends, pets were scat­tered; were closed for 3 days
– any­one with inter­net access could have posted staff updates dur­ing the fires
– com­mu­ni­cate with work fam­ily, but hadn’t inte­grated enough quite yet

want to make the site more brows­able, too

ques­tion: another library in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion at a city that doesn’t want infor­ma­tion on 3rd-party servers
answer: we’re call­ing this our “wiki” and not our “intranet” so they don’t even know

ques­tion: i know free is good, but are there prod­ucts you know of that you would have paid for that are really good
answer: if you have server space, joomla is really good; same with twiki; social­text; may still need pro­gram­mers, though

ques­tion: can you tell us more about the staff pro­files and if they have suc­ceeded?
answer: cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment is about to start tak­ing pic­tures of all of their staff and updat­ing everybody’s infor­ma­tion; they have 87 staff mem­bers so they don’t know some folks very well or don’t know what all the pages look like

ques­tion: how much time per week does it take in admin­is­tra­tive work:
answer: eleni works on the wiki an hour a day, mostly see­ing what peo­ple are post­ing; does this maybe 3–4 times a week; train­ing takes the longest, espe­cially because they have two branches

ques­tion: do you have plans to include your friends, foun­da­tion, etc.?
answer: already included the com­mit­tees and boards (min­utes right now, plan­ning to add pro­files), but do plan to expand to those things, yes

ques­tion: how do you man­age secu­rity on site?
answer: not every­one is log­ging on right now, but cer­tain staff mem­bers have the abil­ity to restrict pages; encour­ag­ing them to keep their con­tent open, though, for trans­parency; when man­age­ment team meets, they have some staff issues they don’t want every­one to see so use the “share” but­ton where you can choose who can see the page (by indi­vid­ual or group)

ques­tion: you showed a pic­ture of a prob­lem patron — is that a poten­tial lia­bil­ity?
answer: dis­cussing this inter­nally via email right now; only do this for peo­ple who have com­mit­ted a crime in a library, the kind of per­son they need to call the police for if they come in; don’t keep many pho­tos, based on inci­dent reports

ques­tion: same ques­tion about the pic­tures of chil­dren
answer: they do get per­mis­sion to post these, although they’re more lax about the teens; Flickr pic­tures of chil­dren are set to pri­vate on Flickr; eleni and donna are the gate­keep­ers and require per­mis­sion slips

pre­sen­ta­tion will be avail­able at http://www.library.escondido.org/wiki.ppt

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- Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt

Name 3 places your library should be on the web besides your library’s web­site
From audi­ence:
1. Sec­ond Life
2. MySpace
3. Flickr

“online in-reach”

sum­mary: make your web­site two-way where peo­ple can have a voice on it
if they can’t con­tribute to it, there’s noth­ing there for them
online, everyone’s patrons are your patrons
– talk this over with your gov­ern­ing agency
– loosen up!
– mimic online what we do in the real world, where you help other libraries’ patrons

free is good
much of this is free, which helps

search engine find­abil­ity
– search for vari­a­tions of your library’s name
– ensure your site is accu­rately at the top
– minor or metasearch engines
– buy AdWords from Google ($)
– search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) ($)

look at your site sta­tis­tics to see what other search engines folks are using to reach your site

library direc­tory list­ings
– Lib­Dex
– Map­Muse
– Libraries411
oth­ers
make sure you’re found in these

blog search engines
– Feed Sub­mit­ter sub­mits your blog’s feed to 15 sites at once
– Robin Good’s list of where to sub­mit your blog and feed
– RSS Spec­i­fi­ca­tions list of where to sub­mit your feed

sweet wikipedia good­ness
– list your library on the appro­pri­ate town or county entries
note if your library has won any awards, etc.

wikimapia
– add loca­tions for your libraries and other com­mu­nity fea­tures of interest

com­mu­nity web­site pres­ence
– americantowns.com
– event­ful
etc.

blogs and forums
– local blogs
– tech­nol­ogy boards
– con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion boards
– forums and groups with local flair (google, yahoo)

find local blogs
– search the tags for your zip code on Flickr
– blogdigger.com

inter­act with local blogs
– no mar­ket­ing speak
– don’t intrude, but be avail­able
– find appro­pri­ate blogs
– don’t be heavy-handed
– enter­ing into an online com­mu­nity can be hard work
– have authen­tic voice, information

showed an exam­ple of Sarah com­ment­ing on a local professor’s blog as a model

pres­ence where it’s war­ranted
– ensure your library has a pres­ence on local web­sites (schools, uni­ver­si­ties, etc.)
– are you linked anywhere?

in google, link:YourLibraryURLhere to find who’s link­ing to you

social review web­sites
what are your cus­tomers say­ing when you’re not around?
– yelp
– judy’s book
– city­search
– insid­er­pages
– local2me

viral mar­ket­ing because you can mar­ket your services

social net­work­ing sites
– cre­ate a pro­file for your library
– major options: myspace, face­book, flickr, ning
– find great exam­ples on the lib­suc­cess list

a lot of peo­ple are mov­ing off myspace onto face­book
if you are still in the mid­dle of a 2-year project to start a site on myspace, you need to move faster
there’s so much you can do to face­book to reach out to people

give them some­thing new often to keep them back
you must have follow-through
don’t use your library’s build­ing as your avatar

Con­tra Costa Library had 2 para­pro­fes­sional staff work on the myspace page
it’s impor­tant to real­ize as librar­i­ans that we don’t have to *do* all of this, that we can hand some of these things off to peo­ple who are experts at this or have an inter­est in it
tap the local tal­ent and don’t limit to MLS hold­ers
helps dis­trib­ute the work­load in a prac­ti­cal sense

Hen­nepin County Library’s Book­Space
inter­ac­tive, aes­thet­i­cally beautiful

showed a Face­book Flyer exam­ple from Tutt Library

showed Ask MetaFil­ter site and Slam the Boards (which is now repeat­ing the 10th of every month)

duh, we’re experts, too
– allexperts.com
– ziki
– illu­mio
– qunu
– yedda
– FAQQLY
– Otavo
– yahoo answers
list your staff as experts in var­i­ous free expert tools

wifi is king
if you offer wire­less in your build­ing, make sure you are listed in wifi direc­to­ries
– wififreespot
– wifi­hotspotlist
– wifi411,
– wifinder
– jiwire
– wi-fi zone
name your net­work some­thing fun that adver­tises your library, not just “default”

push the info out
via email and rss
– invest in newslet­ter soft­ware (maybe $)
– get email addresses from ILS
– send peri­od­i­cally (don’t spam)
– vari­ety of fea­tures
push out info as a per­son, not an institution

blog geo-search engines
list your library’s blog on geo­graphic blog search engines
– frappr
– feedmap
– blog­wise
– gFeedMap

where are peo­ple look­ing for phone num­bers?
are you in those places yet? list your con­tact info in online directories

- askc­ity
– yahoo! local
– google maps
clinton-macomb pub­lic library as exam­ple with a great review in google local

sec­ond life
– Info Island
prob­lem is band­width and hard­ware issues
if you have a super active com­mu­nity in sec­ond life, put energy into that; if you have a super active com­mu­nity of blog­gers, put energy into that
will prob­a­bly get more bang for your buck putting your energy into blog­ging right now

URLs
OPAC URLs suck
use wccls.org instead of wccls.lib.or.us, but even bet­ter is booksandmovies.org

instant mes­sag­ing
– a pri­mary forum of com­mu­ni­ca­tion
– free, easy

text mes­sag­ing
– cell­phones and SMS con­tinue to grow
– Orange County Library Sys­tem exam­ple; only pub­lic library doing this?

make A/V con­tent find­able
– youtube
– blip.tv
– blinkx
– singing­fish
– yahoo pod­casts
– podcast.net
– pod­cast alley
– dig­i­tal pod­cast
– pod­scope
record and put up a few sto­ry­times as a way to get your feet wet
tran­scribe audio con­tent with podzinger

find men­tions of your library
all over the web, not just the social review sites
– google/yahoo news
– ice rocket
– tech­no­rati
– feed­ster
– blog­lines
– youtube
– flickr
sarah found lots of pic­tures of peo­ple skate­board­ing down the rails at the library :-p

chit­ter on twit­ter
– is it worth it?
– be clear about what you’re send­ing
– works best when send­ing out quick info
– guide to twit­ter in libraries by Ellyssa Kroski

are your patrons using these tools?
we think so
but even if they’re not, we can model this behav­ior and lead the way

ques­tion: how did they cre­ate the face­book flyer?
answer: tool on face­book site where you upload an image and text

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