Professional Development

For those who have been following the evolution of Library 2.0, a lot of this will be familiar… so I am just going to include links to most of what was covered:

• Tim Bucknall highlighted the OCLC findings
• Patrons want self-sufficiency, satisfaction, and seamlessness
• Danny Nanez highlighted Michael Habib’s Academic Library 2.0
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• Discussed Blackboard, pathfinders, chat reference
• MyWelch: a blackboard interface for library services
• Students as creators of content
• Ann Arbor Library is innovative
• Ann Arbor Catalog
• University of Minnesota Website wiki is EXACTLY what we’re trying to do
• Gaming in Libraries (Amy Harris & Scott Rice)
• The idea is to make the library fun
• Overview of millennials (PDF)
• Discussed their game night, citing Giz & WFU; they include cards & board games
• Photos on Flickr
• Info Island on Second Life
• Another option, Active World, can link to web content, create floor plan of the library & link to real library resources
• UNCG Info Lit game, teaches info lit uses AJAX, is ADA compliant, and is free under CC License
• Tim Bucknall discussed the future of the ILS/OPAC, cited Roy Tennant presentation from SOLINET
• Federated search beyond just our catalog (journals, websites, etc)
• “Will ILS return to original function as inventory–rather than a search–tool?”
• Google Books (which I love, as you may know)
• Adding MARC records isn’t scalable when we have full text from all these major research libraries (via Google Books)
• People don’t want MARC records, they want to search full text
• Will probably turn to local data & inventory, where catalog is just a piece of search
• Says, “Why don’t we have a Digital Guilford where people can search local documents.” Sound familiar?
• Terry Brandsma discussed AquaBrowser as an enhancement to the catalog
• Examples of AquaBrowser: Queens Library & Arkansas State Library-Beebe
• AquaBrowser doesn’t require MARC records, could include journal articles, websites, etc
• Discussed Endeca as a more efficient catalog; developed for retail/business
• Examples of Endeca: NCSU & McMaster University
• Discussed WorldCat as way to search beyond just local holdings & searches across books and articles
• University of Washington is using WorldCat as their catalog
• Discussed SirsiDynix Enterprise Portal Solutions (EPS) as a way of forced clustering before searching
• Examples of EPS: Arcadia, Boston Public Library, & Cerritos College
• Discussed faceted and visual browsing including SirsiDynix & KartOO Visu
• Tim Bucknall and Lynda Kellam discussed Breaking Down Barriers
• Tim pointed out that libraries have traditionally tried to set itself apart from the internet & say “that’s bad, we’re good.” Now we’re realizing that users will be in that other space, & we need to put our content there.
• We can do this using: OpenURL, COinS (we have it, thanks to Kevin!), Bookmarklets, & Blackboard
• Pushing specific content to subject area classes in Blackboard
• Lynda demoed this content push to Blackboard; there is a “My Library Resources” option in the course
• Don’t have to reauthenticate once they’re in Blackboard
• Can also be pushed to open course websites (not necessarily Blackboard)
• Banner extract of classes is added to a library database, liaisons then can interact with databases & add appropriate resources to their courses
• Tim followed up on the Blackboard push project, they wanted to get down to just one click, so it required a different technology
• Want to use this technology in other ways: news, new resources, reminders, contact links, course guides, mobile, etc. Much more targeted!!
• Richard Cox worked on the technology behind this
• Tim answered questions: WebFeat was discussed… a little clunky/slower, limited searching, but is a big step forward from current EZ Search

Back to blogging, after catching up on email. I will try to group some of the presentations I attended:

I tried to attend as many presentations on gaming in libraries as I could, since that has become a specialty of ours at ZSR and Giz and I are scheduled to present at the 2nd Gaming in Libraries Symposium in Chicago this summer. Our gaming experience has been largely a marketing strategy to try to attract students to the library, but other libraries have gone the next step and are trying to incorporate the gaming experience into library instruction.

The first presentation was by a team from the University of Cincinnati Libraries. They called their inhouse team of librarians a learning community because they knew they would be learning as they went about their project. When they submitted their paper over a year ago, they thought they would have a viable, tested product focusing on using a video game to teach plagiarism and report on its success. In fact, they discovered they were in a bit over their heads with the complexity of the gaming software and after the head of the Faculty Technology Resource Center who offered to do the programming for them left, they had to go back and reassess. Next, they looked at trying to incorporate existing games and found that Second Life was not suitable at all for their project but that two games called Montage-a-Google and Guess-the-Google had modest success when used in library instruction.

The second presentation was an excellent comprehensive approach to all aspects of gaming in libraries, called “Gaming for the Ages: A Wholistic View from Collections to Services” by David Ward and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They covered topics like Gaming in Society, Gaming in Education, Gaming in Libraries, a Five Year Plan for Gaming at UIUC, and Future Directions. One difference I noted in their environment was that they had a number of faculty at UIUC who were doing active research on learning through gaming. They are taking the view that in 10 years gaming will be a major avenue for learning. At the UIUC Undergraduate Library, they have begun a gaming collection of both hardware and software. They have not tried to write any gaming software, but have tried simple games like the “ESP Game” and “Tapper” in their library instruction. Here is a challenge for Erik to think about: “wouldn’t it be great if the OPAC were a fun game?”

Lynn