After observing the technology knowledge gap between undergraduates and librarians at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library created a self-directed training program for staff, offering incentives and methods for improving technology skills in a flexible manner.
From the article:
The Technology Challenge was implemented from June 2007 to January 2008. HBLL staff included 175 full-time employees, 96 of whom participated in the challenge. (The student employees were not involved.) Participants were asked to spend fifteen minutes each day learning a new technology skill. HBLL leaders used rewards to make the program enjoyable and to motivate participation: For each minute spent learning technology, participants earned one point, and when one thousand points were earned, the participant would receive a gift certificate to the campus bookstore. Staff and faculty participated and tracked their progress through an online board game called “Techopoly.”
Participation was voluntary, and staff and faculty were free to choose which tasks and challenges they would complete. Tasks fell into one of four categories: software, hardware, library technology, and the internet. Participants were required to complete one hundred points in each category, but beyond that, were able to decide how to spend their time. Examples of tasks included attending workshops, exploring online tutorials, and reading books or articles about a relevant topic. For each hundred points earned, participants could complete a mini-challenge, which included reading blogs or e-books, listening to podcasts, or creating a photo CD. Participants who completed fifteen out of twenty possible challenges were entered into a drawing for another gift certificate.
The full article is available through our databases:
Bridging the Gap: Self-Directed Staff Technology Training Quinney, Kayla L; Smith, Sara D; Galbraith, Quinn. Information Technology and Libraries29.4 (Dec 2010): 205-213.
Congrats to our very own Kate Lynch for her work at DrupalCon San Francisco, held last week. As you all may know, Kate’s been very involved with Drupal for our own library website, as well as with the Drupal community as a whole. In addition to her presentation on accessibility at the recent conference, she was a part of a presentation focusing on libraries and library websites, and got a nice mention in the American Libraries conference writeup.
Yay, Kate!
[Thanks Peter!]
The Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has this pretty dashboard where they display the statistics that are relevant to their library. This includes database statistics, cataloging statistics, membership information, and so on.
Has anyone seen anything like this in use in an academic setting? It seems like a nice way to package some numbers about the kinds of things we do, and usage information.
[Thanks Kate!]
February Presentation : February 2, 2010 : 10 am : Location L33
Remember that interview you did over the summer? Well, the Information Audit Report is available and ready for your review. You can find it at L:TeamsInformation AuditInfoAuditFinalReport.pdf.
This month’s Spark! presentation will be for discussion of the report’s recommendations and any other questions or feedback you have about the report and the interview process.
We’ll provide light refreshments (probably delicious muffins!) and you should bring your own drink.
Please join us!
The University of Rochester has been working steadily on a project called the eXtensible Catalog, or XC.
XC is meant to provide a discovery layer to work along with existing library systems. They’re working on creating “services” that will transform various formats of resources and data into a common format that can be delivered to users in a unified interface.
They are using Drupal as their content management system, which could be useful for us here, since we’re using Drupal as well. They’re also working on Blackboard integration.
There is a set of 6 screencasts that describe the functionality of XC, how it works, and what can be expected from the project. He discusses the challenges presented by library metadata, including the transition from existing MARC data and RDA.
Library Journal announced that EBSCOHost is releasing a discovery layer interface as a part of their Integrated Search platform. Available at the end of 2009, it will be based on pre-indexed metadata, and will have include WorldCat records from OCLC.
To clarify, this is different from federated search. A federated search sends searches out from a search screen, often resulting in long wait for results from various databases. Pre-indexed searches will be faster because the article information has been compiled ahead of time.
My first thought was, does this mean that WorldCat Local will then include EBSCO content? Apparently, the answer to that is Yes, as OCLC is now offering access to EBSCO databases via WCL for libraries who subscribe to both.
As a follow up to last week’s post on Summon, The Shifted Librarian has two write-ups of sessions at ALA that discuss Summon in more detail. This one is more background on users and why we need a unified search interface. This one talks about the product in a little more detail, including the difference between this and a federated search product.
Some of you may have seen the press release for Serials Solutions new “Unified Search Interface” product, Summon.
It is meant to be a new kind of interface that pulls in a variety of sources, including article-level metadata from Proquest and Gale. Image and text below from the Serials Solutions site:
“It goes beyond federated search, beyond next-generation catalogs to create an all-new service for libraries. Through one simple search, it provides instant access to the breadth of authoritative content that’s the hallmark of great libraries – digital and print, audio and video, single articles to entire e-journals, and every format in between.”
They’re planning for beta this spring — this is worth keeping an eye on. There’s clearly a need for a product that does all this, so we’ll see how it delivers. If you’re planning to go to ALA or ACRL, you might want to stop by the booth for a demo. I’d be interested in hearing about it, and I’m probably not alone.
Links to:
LJ article
Federated search press releases blog post
WorldCat.org is now accessible via your mobile phone. OCLC has created a downloadable application for several operating systems via Boopsie. I have a Palm OS, and found it really easy to download the applications (you have to download both the WorldCat app and the Boopsie search app) and the search seems to work fine. I wasn’t able to connect directly from the Palm WorldCat app to the Drexel catalog, but it looks like the iPhone app does do this, once you choose a library which whom you are affiliated.
I’d be interested in hearing what you all think about this, especially from you iPhone users out there. Is it easy to use? Do you see any value in this kind of offering?
Yesterday, Google, the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers reached a settlement about Google’s Book Search project. There’s an article in today’s Chronicle about it. [Thanks Tim]
There has been a fair amount of list traffic and discussion on the topic, and one of the interesting things I found by following some of this is that Google plans to offer an institutional subscription for libraries that would allow researchers to search the full-text of the titles they’ve digitized. It’s not clear from their info page how this differs from the book search capabilities available to the general public, or from the institutional subscriptions.
“Academics will be able to apply through an institution to run computational queries through the index without actually reading individual books” From #5 here.
There is certainly more to come.
