Top Tech Trends

Dorothea Salo, Scholarly Research Services Librarian, University of Wisconsin-Madison;

• Internet rationing
• digital divide
• GoogleBooks
• flickrpro account being wiped out
• discovery layers

Roger Nevin, Teacher-Librarian, Kawartha Pine Ridge DSB;

• cloud computing
• portability

Aaron Schmidt, Principal, Influx Library User Experience;

• ubiquity and ease of use of digital content, e.g. NetFlix -- easier than what PLs are offering, not expensive
• in any case, easy trumps free
• eBook revolution
• PLs could never provide as much stuff as Amazon or Google
• challenges the notion that "Books are our Brand"
• PLs should think about designing places for learning, and places for experiences

Nicole Engard, Director of Open Source Education, Bywater Solutions

Discussion:

-Google's choke by spam presents a big opportunity for libraries

- challenge of homogenizing influences -- how do we find lost voices and ensure they are heard? Should libraries be publishers?

- Net Neutrality - no restrictions by Internet service providers (ISPs) and governments on content, sites, platforms, the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and the modes of communication.

-Park County Library's Facebook and Privacy page -- a good thing

- design first for mobile -- then put that on big screens

Marketing Virtual Services

Friday February 4, 2011 2:10pm

Christy Giesler, Teen Services Librarian, Kitchener PL;

Cecile Farnum, Ryerson University;

Liz Dobson, Librarian, Centennial College

Pretty traditional approaches, generally, e.g. mandatory training of all staff, mention in publications, post in library, etc.

Ideas:

• barrier free library cards: give out cards on the spot. If old cards had fines, forgive the fines
• MP3 players to borrow and try
• booth with products at Word on the Street -- to promote download*Library

Contemporary marketing trends -- can these be used for virtual services

• embedded testimonials .e.g. on facebook
• importance of brand
• profiling of customers --> customized promotions
• dynamic pricing online -- based on profile of person coming in (used in airline flights)

Perceptions of Public Library Services - FOPL report

Friday February 4, 2011 9:05am

Carol French, Heather Angel, Market Probe

• qualifications/reservations re research --- landlines only, no interviews of non-English or non-French speakers. 4% could not conduct survey due to language barriers. Another 10% do not speak either English or French in the home.
• 68% said they had a library card, 66% said they visited a library in person in past year. 76% of 18-24 year olds have cards.
• Remote use of library has increased (but still only 12% of respondents had used web to access lib materials i.e. e-resources)
• Most common way to access PL is still in-person (37% use only this way)
• Internet and phone access are in addition to in-person, not a substitute
• 
  
• increase in number of people attending programs (23% took kids, 14% attended adult program) -- but way less than borrowed books (90%)
• could this be a trend? Are libraries offering more programs, YES (according to Min Culture Stats) or are people more interested?
• Number of cardholders, in-person visits, visits per person has not changed much in 10 years.
• 18-24 yr olds are biggest users, most likely to use Internet
• 
  
• 68% thought PL should provide technology training (though 17% of these couldn't think of any topics)
• ADVICE: consider convenience as key component of every value proposition.

Ministry of Tourism and Culture Public Libraries Update

Thursday Feb 2 2011 3:45pm

Stephen Davidson, Assistant Deputy Minister

$28mm ongoing annual grants -- of that $1.4MM goes to Virtual Reference Library, $4.4 million goes to OLS and OLA, $2 million to Pay Equity

Culture Strategic Investment Fund In 2009-10, over $1 million split among 49 cultural organizations (arts council, historical societies, dance, theatre, algoma university.)

Creative Communities Prosperity Fund $1.3million -- libraries eligible to compete with upper and lower tier municipalities, municipal enterprises, museums, heritage organizations.

Trillium Foundation

Museums and Technology Fund -- not open to libraries.

Mentioned the power of stories to influence politicians, and policies.

Evaluating Your Digital Core

Thursday February 3, 10:40 am

Heather Cunningham, Librarian, University of Toronto;

Peter Atkinson, E-Services Specialist, St Thomas PL;

Marian Doucette, Web Architect, Huron County PL

Heather:

• CrazyEgg.com is a commercial service which tracks where people click in your site -- generates a heat map for your site. Rates vary from $9 to $99 a month, depending on # visitors, # pages you can track at once.
• Used other measurement tools too, e.g. web analytics, in person Qs, stats from web guides.

Marian:

• go where your users are
• Pick social media which matches demographic of your users.
• Only 3% of social media users are 65+
• Average age of all social media = 37; of Twitter users = 39, Facebook = 38, LinkedIn = 44
• Be clear on your goal: e.g. is it
• to drive traffic to a database
• to bring in foot traffic
• to get feedback on a program or proposal

• That will determine what you measure

Basic Metrics…

• Unique users = # distinct people who visit site on given day = Awareness of your site
• Page views = # distinct pages viewed on given day = Stickiness of site / value of site’s content
• Bounce rate = % people who view 1 page & leave = Interest in site/content
• Time spent = Amount of time average user spends on site = Is site destination or pass-through

• www.pingdom.com - tool for measuring website performance (down time, response time, get email and twitter alerts $9.95 per month for five sites & 20 SMS alerts)
• Facebook has Insights: install piece of code on your website and then get metrics on who is using your site. Will shows number of impressions shown to users, # likes, etc.
• Huron County is using facebook to search catalogue -- used fbml (sort of like html) to create tabs and embed catalogue search box in Huron County Library facebook page
• Now using stat counter, Google analytics to see if social media is driving people to library catalogue website
• TwitterAnalyzer
• Tweet Effect
• Facebook ads -- type in city name to see how many users there are (LOTS for Elmira, quite a few for New Hamburg, Baden, fewer for Ayr. Ab0ut 15 for New Dundee. None for St. Clements, Linwood, Bloomingdale.)

Other guides:

Pew Internet reports , e.g. Who's Online - demographics of Internet users; Generations and their Gadgets . You can also subscribe to get regular updates from Pew Institute.

1. Focus your objectives.

2. Pick 2-3 relevant measures.

3. Pull data regularly.

4. Look for unexplained trends.

5. Analyze, test & fix.

Next Generation Workflows for Next Generation Libraries

Thursday Feb 3 2011 9:05am

Next Generation Workflows for Next Generation Libraries

Karen Calhoun, VP WorldCat and Metadata Services, OCLC

Rick Anderson, Scholarly Resources and Collections, University of Utah

My star session for the conference -- most thought-provoking!

Rick started by comparing Sane and Insane things libraries [still] do today

Less Sane

InterLibrary Loan

Big Deals with database vendors

Reference / Bibliographic Instruction

More Sane

Patron Driven Acquisition

Ease of use

Wikipedia (as a model)
Feels we need new goals (see below) in the light of these

Things That Change Absolutely Everything Libraries Do

Google Books changes absolutely everything libraries do. Why (or how) try to compete?

• 130 million books
• good books, better than lots of libraries, because coming from Yale, Harvard etc.
• radical discoverability -- nothing could be easier
• radical availability -- almost everything a person could want

Hathi Trust not as comprehensive as Google Books, but better metadateven better radical discoverability

• 8 million books in 2010

Oxford University Press backlist is available only as Print On Demand

Espresso Book Machine - a way to make any book any patron wants available. The epitome of customer service

Impact: Circ per student has declined very significantly. Most studies show small decline in overall circ, but don't correct for increased enrollment. Actual decline is huge.

What Library Goals Should Be:

• every book published is easily and immediately findable
• any book ever published can be purchased for a patron immediately (or borrowed)
• every article is easily and immediately findable
• every article ever published can be purchased for a patron immediately
• every data set is easily and immediately findable
• every data set ever published can be purchased for a patron immediately

EBooks are a great solution -- 24 hour remote access, searchable, can use like databases.

Should post records of all ebooks on spec -- then buy what people want

Karen Calhoun

-- recommended Alexa.com as tool to audit your website $199 -- gives recommendations for improvement

- stressed that we MUST change our workflows: traditional cataloguing is not working, it is not making information accessible and discoverable. We are spending our time doing things that don't work for patrons any more.

* Capture bibliographic data as far upstream as possible

* Handle items and records only once

* Perform work where it makes the most sense. Save MLIS for tasks only they can do.