What kind of solutions do you implement at your library for this? We’re currently using a shared network drive but it has many problems and doesn’t meet our needs. Shared files are constantly deleted or misplaced (inadvertently) by users. The network isn’t accessible from off-campus. People can’t really share narrative, short of creating a word document and putting some thoughts in it and hoping people intuit from the file name why it might be useful.

Tools already under consideration (or nixed from our list): Drupal, WordPress, various wiki products, NING, CONTENTdm. What am I missing?

Full disclosure: I just want it to be Drupal, but due diligence means I gotta consider some alternatives. (:

I’ve talked in the past about the debate amongst my colleagues at PCC: some of us want to streamline and simplify the home page and others want to put everything conceivably relevant to a student right out there. I have always come down firmly on the side of simplify and streamline for a number of reasons. They’re not original ideas and most revolve around the idea of developing in users a base level of skill and competency that functions in any library system. I also just visually deplore homepages that are crammed full of links and blurbs.

That’s all well and good when you’re operating within a local library context, but what good is it when you’re not talking about the library? Like, when you’re shopping for boots. I realized that I’m asking these sportswear companies to do exactly what I don’t want to do with our website—put stuff front and center so I can find it (or use a reasonably structured schema of some kind). To me library and online retailer are different use environments most of the time, but they probably result in the same expectation from a number of our users.

That’s reminiscent of a conversation over at command-f. I wish I’d been paying attention several weeks ago when it happened, but I’ll just play catch up on my own now.

Essentially, Anne-Marie is riffing on some discussions from the fall OR/WA ACRL meeting. One of the points (attributed to Terry Reese) that really stuck with me is the idea that we need to do more than move the ILS to the network level, we need to shift the entire discovery process to that same level. Not surprisingly the reaction to this statement was varied and emphatic, with some librarians giving the response that Caleb correctly surmises is connected to my thoughts on teaching a systematic approach to research and reference (articles come from databases, databases can usually be found on the library website).

I want to be clear about something here, something that kept coming up for me as I pretended to participate in this conversation. I don’t for a moment suggest or desire that we teach that articles ONLY come from databases. But let’s  be very clear about the context I operate within. My students are community college students and their instructors are often, dare I say it, overworked and less-than-imaginative with some assignments. We see students who have been given instructions like “don’t use ___ database, those articles are too easy” and that doesn’t even touch on the “nothing from the Internet” assignments we see weekly. I had to fight with a department chair last year about whether or not Ebsco products contain peer reviewed articles (he doubted the veracity of the student who said the librarian helped her find a peer reviewed article in some Ebsco DB). So when I’m teaching, what I’m really teaching is: here’s how to efficiently and effectively work within the system that you’ve been relegated to. Does that meet the lofty ideals I had in library school, whereby I’d motivate everyone into their own happy info-is-everywhere bubbles? No, but this is reality. Community college reality.

I get 50 minutes, sometimes 110 if I’ve really been working the outreach to that particular faculty. This is not enough time to instill a deep-seated value of information from far-and-wide. It’s probably not even enough to start that conversation with the students. You know the rest of these arguments, they’ve been made by every instructional librarian relegated to the one-shot, I’m sure. The work of groups like OWEAC (The Oregon Writing and English Advisory Committee) and the IL Summit participants make really important steps toward this “more perfect” (heh) end, but they are baby steps and there are so many more to be taken. What those groups will engender for us is a place in curriculum where IL has some mandated support. It doesn’t take us into that philosophical and ideological space where we get warm and fuzzy about information. I don’t know how to get us there. I don’t teach credit classes and it’s a rare pleasure when I see students more than one or two isolated times. I’ll have to count on the credit instruction librarians to let me know what that experience is like. We have a 1 credit class at PCC Library, but even that doesn’t have the room to really get deep with the “creating lifelong learners and productive citizens” (Anne-Marie). It’s an assignment-based class, really, although the assignment isn’t ours.

As noted at command-f, many librarians remain convinced that the local user needs to be connected to local content (quickly). For me this is about two things: practicality (students need snappy turnaround, and they procrastinate like mofos) and pride (more on this in a bit). I totally agree with everyone who wishes we’d stop catering to these last minute people, but I can’t find an actual way to get college students to stop leaving things till the last minute (um, no, you can’t receive that ILL by tomorrow). I think to some extent this is why I want to see our website give some preference toward the moderately information literate user. I require that it be functional and easy for the novice to get in and get out, but I really want it to have something more for the student who really benefits from the experience. I’m hoping that our move to WorldCat Local is going to help us in this quest.

There are going to be new interesting challenges in the WorldCat environment, no doubt. For starters we don’t know how we’re going to limit by campus. This is an important feature, not just for the slaquers, but for the browsers. The people who just want to find the audio fiction while they kill an hour waiting for the shuttle. As my boss is fond of reminding us, this is their library. If they want it to be easy to get a list of the available audio fiction at the building they are already standing in, far be it from me or my system to stand in the way.

The other thing I’m really unsure about is the default location. I believe the default holdings location is local, followed by consortial, followed by WorldCat. I can’t say I’ve worked out what layout works best for which users in which scenarios, but I do know that the decision was probably workflow related. It’s not bad reasoning, libraries are busy and the staff can’t spend a ton of time weeding out requests for things we already own locally, just because someone didn’t notice our  holdings. It seems to me that the ultimate solution is moderated by software and interface changes, not by forcing either staff or user to accomodate the system. But we’re not there yet. I don’t have any idea what there looks like. Hm.

Remember I said pride was also at issue here? One of the principle factors is that we’re proud of our systems, tools, environments. We want to promote them to our users. “Learn to use the magical database— it can give you so much.” But should we be proud?  I mean to the extent that we’re complacent. You don’t need to read snarky librarian blogs to know that whole aspects of the library experience are completely dysfunctional. Everyone from shelver to director has had some sort of experience with/as a user that confirms this. Obfuscation by call number, crappy interfacing, incomprehensible and aggressive signage.

Read anything related to library history and you are struck immediately by the sweetness of the origins of information and archive management and also with reverence for how far we’ve come. But we seem to be at a total crossroads. We want to give our users everything they could ever need in an easy to use package they never have to leave home to receive but we’re also trying to honor those users for whom the edifice still means something. We’re trying to blend the old track with the new track and coming up with what a DJ would call a trainwreck, except that when a DJ’s trainwreck is caused by technical malfunction we forgive her. When a library’s trainwreck is caused by techinical malfunction it’s something altogether different, I just can’t figure out what.

Some librarians advocate for the most simplified process possible. Students don’t need to know that articles come from databases and that peer review is an editorial process. Proponents of this argument suggest that we add links to the homepage that will take the user to the expected content with as few decisions (clicks) as possible along the way. Want a peer reviewed article? Follow the peer reviewed article link, in which the requisite checkboxes will have already been checked on your behalf.

A good bit of support for the first viewpoint (shortcutting) says that we see and interact with so few students in the library (distance learning, y0), via email, or on the telephone that we have to assume a large percentage of the unseen are not finding what they are looking for. And if they’re finding it, they’re likely doing so with more frustration than necessary. For this reason it has also been suggested that we invest in some kind of federated searching tool.

For me, personally, I have a difficult time wearing the librarian hat and the design hat at the same time. I’ve been accused of striving for the ideal (and perhaps missing the reality) in these discussions—and I’m generally okeh with that.

My librarian objection is that is our job to teach these skills and I fear our students will go out into a world full of libraries that might not have a “Peer Reviewed Articles” link. If we’ve taught them to think categorically about research they will know that they learned that articles are found in databases and try to start there. I don’t want to find that we’ve handicapped our students by “dumbing things down.” True, not all of our students (by far) have any plan for further formal education. I still expect them to become competant consumers and producers of information. This also doesn’t mean that I don’t grok the other argument, I’ve just chosen to hope for the best, I guess.

If our students don’t have these skills let’s work harder to get the education to them, not make it easier to check-out on the process. Distance learning students need librarians and IL instruction—hell, everyone needs this stuff if you ask me—and I’m just going to have to stalk those students who are roaming the campus but never coming in the library. Don’t want to learn controlled vocabulary in the library? Fine, I’ll bring it to you in the cafeteria, the gym, and this here screencast tutorial.

My design stance on this is that providing all of these links is just adding clutter to the homepage. Good design needs room to breathe and all of that jazz. It’s a pretty short argument, but an important one. We just spent the better part of year a completely scrapping our woefully inadequate website and building a new one. The last thing I want is to see it overrun with rampant linking. That’s what all that beautiful nav is about.

A colleague’s Frostian reflection today was that she wished our students didn’t have to choose between two roads (on our website) in order to search for information. I think this is an interesting notion. Where she sees too many roads, I think I see too few. I see the need to simplify access for some students but not at the expense of options and precision.

How do you navigate these discussions in your library? Where is the happy medium? Do we need to go to the completely customizable portal model? Click here if you want your website eerily simplified, click here if you’d like frustration with a side of controlled vocabulary…

I think it’s amazing that just a few weeks ago I was as skeptical of Twitter as many folks out there and now I think I’m a solid convert. Without Twitter I’d have spent much of ALA alone and hungry. I know there has to be some application for community college libraries– I just haven’t figured out what it is yet. I’ve heard my boss might have caught some serious brainfire at ALA as well, so I am looking forward to connecting with her and seeing what our collective imaginations can come up with.

As with every national conference I attend I am always struck by the numbers of librarians out there stagnating away in libraries with administrators who are afraid to do something different than they’ve always done. I feel like I need to keep pinching myself because I certainly don’t suffer under any stale conditions. How awesome to have a boss who wants you to dream big and figure out ways to apply those dreams in practical, user-centered ways. I swear I’m not sucking up, just reflecting.

If, like me, you are blessed with an environment in which you can dream big, I recommend a column in the current RUSQ, written by Michale Stephens. Taming technolust: Ten steps for planning in a 2.0 world offers concrete steps to take on your way to embracing the twopointopian mishegas while ensuring that you don’t go overboard with “flashy, sexy technology” that does nothing to further your end goals.

Of course as soon as I tweet my recommendation I realize that Techsmith isn’t actually doing that free license offer anymore. (It was a pretty old deal, who can blame them?) So I retweet elliehearts to tell her that it is no mo. She sends me back an @msg explaining why she’s hunting for screencap software anyway. We agree it’s a bummer on the Snagit issue.

About 2 hours later we both get an @msg from betsyweber at Techsmith, making sure we know there’s a free 30 day trial at Snagit.com and and that they have educational pricing packages.

That’s just good Twittering. I realize some people might feel invaded, but that’s what happens when you allow your tweets to go public, which is an opt-in function. I for one think Techsmith just got a big gold star.

Design is in the Details, presented by Bryan Veloso and Dan Rubin focused on how the tiny details are what distinguish a good design from a great design. You can check out the entire presentation at their site, Design is in the Details.The presentation focused on the essentials of good design feel: layout, type, and pixels.
Layout. Let your layout breathe. It’s what the slide said and it’s what you should do. Bryan and Dan remind us that at some point you need to step back from your design, break out of code view, and look at the screen. Feel what’s going on with the entire design because that’s what the eye is going to do. The human eye does not go about distinguishing individual pixel rendering choices so that it can pop up a brain alert to the effect that the 1px line in that button is what makes it most realistic. The eye just takes it all in and communicates a feeling.

Type. Use visual design patterns in typography. Using multiples of 3 or rules of ten will help to accomplish this. Check out CNN for an example of excellent visual patterning. You don’t notice it because it’s done well, but there is patterning all over this site. I know because Bryan and Dan pointed it out to me. The spacing between the header and the content works on multiples of 3 (18, I believe). Font sizing is 12. Spacing between content is 12. The wider gap between content and header is intentional and indicates to the eye that there’s a bigger distinction happening here for a reason.

I don’t even have to tell you everything that CNN has done well. Just go to Fox news for some suck-out-loud stab-you-in-the-eye design. There is just about no reproducible design behavior on this site. See that padding around the Fox news logo? Why is it there? There’s no standard spacing anywhere on this page. Notice how CNN had lots of channels but they didn’t accost you? Why does Fox news have channels within channels within pages of channels? This is design at its worst. Check out Bryan and Dan’s presentation slides to see their take on making Fox news better (ha! I know…ha!).

Some specific techniques that will benefit you in the type department

• use range kerning or CSS letter spacing to control the spacing between characters. Visually you just don’t need all of that air around the letters on a screen. This will help with the next technique.
• Avoid widows.
• Using ALLCAPS? Give characters in all capital letters more room to breathe. Your brain recognizes letters by their shapes, too much crowding makes that really difficult for the eye.
• Strive to mimic real life tactile experiences. Don’t use =”black”. Try taking on a text color that’s nearly imperceptibly different from true black. Try using HEX 111 or 333 or some percentage of black.

Pixels. Pixels are where the idea of feel becomes extra important. A pixel is tiny, the smallest unit in a digital image, in fact. Bryan and Dan suggest that you engage in some pixel hacking if you’re really looking to move from good design to great design. Pixel hacking, in my best explanation, is about using the stock options in your progs and then adding things like a 1px stroke or tweaking opacity to make these tiny changes that add up to big textural feel. For example, in Photoshop, the standard settings for dropshadows are ridiculous and will render a dropshadow that has absolutely no realism. Instead tweak the setting to 90%+ opacity and the feel becomes much more effective.

The guys are truly much more effective at discussing these concepts than I, I suggest checking them out sometime if you get a chance. But really, don’t expect too much poise and polish, these guys are big on the um and uh parts of the speaking experience.

The driving concept behind his presentation on social media is that we use this stuff to fuel our narcissism. We create what he refers to as “Planet insert name here” sites: read my blog, follow my tweets, see my feed, me me me. It seems that DL has discovered that people, particularly web users, thrive on narcissism. Isn’t that ultimately what you do online? Check yourself out, check out people who think like you, people who don’t think like you but you want to highlight because they make you look better, etc.

Also noteworthy is that the Twitter generation has decided that email is only for the old fogies out there. After all, keyboards still require more than just your thumbs, what 12-year-old is down with that?

I came away from the session with a screenful of “notes”, most of which are interesting statements DL threw out there for some reason or other. Applied to just about any twopointopian context they make sense. Here are a few I was able to decipher on reviewing my notes:

Talk about what you know. You can’t just change who you are or what you have experience with.

Use social media to be the person who brings the beer to the party, not the person who throws the party to talk about themselves.

There is no ROI on Facebook.

It used to be that you were famous for 15 minutes, now you’re famous for 15 people.

Jim Turner, founder of Bloggers for Hire and creator of the Genuine Blog (a “Daddy blog”) spoke about the challenges and triumphs of blogging professionally. He suggests that there are significant differences between those seeking to blog part-time and those looking for full-time professional blog-writing gigs.

Most part-time bloggers are hobbyists (so many yarn blogs!), stay at home moms and dads (blogging for diaper money, as Turner says), and students. Full-time bloggers, by contrast, tend to be professional communication, marketing, advertising, and PR specialists.

Companies hiring professional bloggers are generally going to have different criteria based upon the company’s knowledge and experience with blogs and bloggers. Small companies are most apt to look for one individual to blog on behalf of all departments. These companies will include startups and will have an interest in finding fast and flexible individuals who are willing to work on a small budget contract. Large companies are apt to have a communication/marketing/PR department that would oversee any blog-related communication and PR efforts. These guys are slow and inflexible and are likely to take their large budget to an agency for outsourced blogging. Media companies and Blogging networks have their own distinct foci, with Media companies relying on seasoned journalists to do their blogging efforts and Blogging networks offering meager per-post or revenue share payment options.

Whatever the environment you choose to do your professional blogging, expect that you will develop content which may include writing, videocasting, podcasting, and live/lifecasting on behalf of the contracted employer. Many companies will expect you to become their evangelist–so if you’re especially uncomfortable with the professional practices of an organization, you may want to reconsider the idea of blogging on their behalf.

In addition to developing content you will also be expected to converse with the company and their readership. This can take the form of e-mail, commenting, and other networked communication. Of course all of this conversation and communication requires quite a bit of monitoring. Who is reading these blog posts? What kind of buzz are they generating, is there any data mining that can be done? Finally, you have to report all of those data you collected while doing all of that monitoring. You’re going to need a fairly good grasp of analytics to do a good job with this last bit.

Blogging for a living is definitely do-able. Realize that it’s a new profession and as such the salaries may not be there yet–but on the other hand, this leaves you a lot of room to negotiate. If you can sell yourself and blogging as the solution to whatever 2.0 quandary an organization is having you may just be in a position to set your own salary. There is some expense involved in blogging for a living, the budgets vary widely at this point, and as a new profession there are very few professional guidelines and certainly no blogger union to keep everything on the level.