June Open Format : FindIt! Summon One-Search : June 8, 2010 : L33 : 10 am

Our next Spark! presentation will be an open conversation style meeting about FindIt! our new Summon “one-search” tool and the transition from SFX to 360Link.  We’ll talk about what it does, how it works and have a conversation about methods for making FindIt a success here at the Drexel Libraries.  There will be a quick demo and we’ll have some library “experts” on hand to discuss the implementation process, branding, the rollout this summer and any other questions that may come up.

5/6/10 Update: Peter will provide our demo, and John and Nancy will have some information to share about the new OpenURL resolver, 360Link.

As always, we’ll have tasty morning snacks, so bring a drink and your questions!

May Presentation : May 4, 2010 : 10 am : Location L33

May’s Spark! presentation-style format will feature Kate Lynch who will discuss the progress made in student personalization features for the website.  She’ll go over the project, the design elements so far, and how it will work for students.  There will be time for discussion and questions after her talk.

As always, we’ll have delicious morning-style snacks from our Spark! chef, Baker E.  Bring a drink, and enjoy!

I recently attended a workshop on DragonDrop, IRT‘s media conversion tool for Drexel faculty and staff. They’ve improved it in many ways and here are some features:

• Has a built in capture function for quick (5 minutes or less) videos with audio. There is no editor, so if you want to be able to edit the capture, you’ll need to use Camtasia or the like.
• Integrates with Camtasia Relay, which also has a Mac version (unlike regular Camtasia).
• Files remain on the IRT server until you delete them.
• Can create “playlists” of uploaded files, and password protect them to make them accessible to certain groups, or accessible using date ranges.
• Can upload a text file to create a text-to-speech file.  Here’s an example of this post converted to speech.

Features coming soon include podcasts by phone, allowing you to call in a podcast which is then directly posted to your playlist.  Also they’re working on the ability to publish directly to YouTube or to iTunesU.

If any library staff want a quick overview of how this works, or wants to know more, please let me know.  To get Camtasia or Camtasia Relay, you will need to attend a training at IRT.

As you know, we’ve got a Facebook app for our library catalog, but there are many other things that libraries are doing with Facebook. I came across this post from David Lee King, covering several options and I wonder whether we want to pursue these here?

Here’s an exerpt from the “Social Stuff” section:

• RSS feeds – sending my website’s main RSS feed to the Facebook page via Simply RSS (doesn’t appear to be working today – drat)
• Favorited other Topeka-area Facebook pages (local sports team, the performing arts center, a local church, etc.)
• I make sure to thank people when they write something on our wall
• I sent one “Update to Fans” broadcast message – no direct responses, but more people favorited us after the message went out
• Started one discussion board topic – “What would you like to see here?” (no one has commented on it yet)

Any thoughts?

ECAR (EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research) just released their 2008 study on Undergrads and IT.  I haven’t read all 122 pages, but I did read the 11 page PDF summary of key findings.  Here’s a few highlights that caught my attention:

• 80% of incoming freshmen own a laptop [p. 2]
• Respondents spend an average of 19.6 hours online each week [ p. 3]
• 79.5% think they are able to “use the Internet effectively and efficiently to search for information”, with a third considering themselves as “experts” [p. 5]
• While half of respondents use social networking sites to communicate with classmates about schoolwork, only 5.5% extend their use of these sites to communication with instructors. Focus groups showed mixed feedback on whether instructors should be in the “student realm” of social networking sites [p. 10]

The summary is definitely worth taking a look at, it can help inform not only the decisions we make, but also helps us “older folks” understand where the incoming students are coming from.  If you are looking for something even shorter, the study authors kindly produced a 4 page “roadmap” (PDF) providing an even more concise summary and some observations relevant to those of us in higher education.

The recent issue of Walt Crawford’s Cites & Insights (which I admittedly don’t regularly read) has an interesting column on when Web 2.0 approaches are worthwhile.  It includes impressions and opinions of various bloggers in library land, and calls some approaches into question.

For example, do we want to offer a service that people are unlikely to use, simply because it’s easy to create?  What kinds of in-library services should we focus on, in order to bring our base level of service to excellent?  Take a look.

Jess Ward in Tech Services presented an informal refresher session on the Library Wiki. She agreed that I could post her outline for some of you who may have missed it.  I’ve annotated the outline below with a few of my notes, in red.

Wiki session outline

Newish stuff: richtext editor / inserting files, not just jpgs anymore

Note: The Rich Editor looks similar to the WordPress or Microsoft Editor, complete with bullets, numbering, undo, etc.  This is a huge help to those of us who might have previously avoided the wiki because of the WikiText.

Top menu

My preference

User profile: email options (watchlist)

Editing: disable edit toolbar if you want

My watchlist

My contributions

Note: She also mentioned a great quick-edit option that can be enabled in “My Preferences” that allows you to double-click on a page in the wiki to automatically be put into the edit window.  This is especially useful for long pages, or pages without sections, so you don’t have to scroll around to access the edit link. To enable, just go to My Preferences at the top of any wiki page, then check the box next to “Edit pages on double click (JavaScript)” in the Editing Tab.

Navigation menu

Searching the wiki – go vs. search ie. SFX

Note: The main feature of this portion of the discussion was to clarify the differences between the search results coming from the Go and Search buttons.  Go will search through the wiki page titles first, and automatically open the exact match. This is perfect for when you know the title of the page.  Search is more like a keyword search, offering a list of results that you can browse.  If Go doesn’t find an exact match, it will pull the results from the keyword search automatically — you don’ t have to do it twice.

She also mentioned that systems is working on a Google-type search for the wiki, which will make the results seem more like what we are used to seeing via search engines.

Recent changes

Library procedures – created by Diane, have that link to an outline of all the how-to documents

Main page

Talk about what to use the wiki for – good for procedures/static pages, documenting things that might be difficult to remember ie. snack bag page http://wiki.library.drexel.edu/index.php/Snack_bag_food_survey_results

Create a new page – place where you want on the wiki. Type name of page, highlight and select url link button.

Wiki text – for those who like the wiki editing options

Insert link

Bullets/numbering

Insert image – pdf, jpg

Upload file – pdf, .doc, .ppt – possible use conference ppts make accessible to wiki instead of linking to ldrive

Linking to Ldrive - L:Technical Services@Electronic ResourcesDatabases

Example pages:

http://wiki.library.drexel.edu/index.php/DVD_and_VHS_cataloging

http://wiki.library.drexel.edu/index.php/DXLAW_wiki_style_template – possible template possibilities

http://wiki.library.drexel.edu/index.php/Suppressing_Cancelled_Orders_and_Rejected_Approvals_from_Millennium

http://wiki.library.drexel.edu/index.php/Analyzed_journal_basics

http://wiki.library.drexel.edu/index.php/Creating_and_editing_holdings_statementshttp://wiki.library.drexel.edu/index.php/Using_949_fields_in_exporting_records_to_Millennium

Thanks, Jess, for a great session!  If anyone has additional updates or things they thought were interesting, please leave a comment.

First, we’ve got a YouTube Channel!  Kate said it well when she pointed out that there are many modules built around YouTube already.  offering our video content via YouTube allows students (or anyone) to grab video that is easily viewable on an iPod or cellphone, and allows us to be where our users are.

So far, we’re posting some of the English 101 Tutorials we’ve produced.  The video quality isn’t stellar, but we’ve got the originals on our site and they’re linked from the YouTube versions.   If anyone has any video they’d like included on the YouTube channel, get in contact with me.

Thanks to our friends in systems, we now have a Facebook application that allows users to search the Libraries’ catalog from within Facebook. This was a popular request from several of our librarians, and can be a good way to provide access to our resources in new places, beyond our website.

Those of you who use Facebook should give it a try and let me know what kinds of things you think can be improved, or adjusted to make it more usable, or friendly.