Web Services Librarian Blog

On Web 2.0

I’ve made no secret of my plans to get the CL a little more involved in Web 2.0. Not blindly, not just for giggles, but because I think it makes sense to give our users more ways to interact with us, to find out what we’re doing, and to ask questions/offer suggestions in informal ways. I feel like we’re already on the right path, with a number of active blogs. (Do we have readers? I admit, I hadn’t really looked until now. Out of curiosity, I checked in Google Reader. Noting that Google Reader is just one platform and that I know for a fact some people go to our blog page and read from there, meaning my numbers are way lower than reality, here’s a sampling of what I found: two blogs have 6 followers, one has 2, two have 1, I had none until I followed myself, and I got tired of counting after that. [I have more than none on my other blogs, and since this one's written to, arguably, a pretty small audience, for not even two months so far, I'm not really heartbroken. ] Not terrible, given that we aren’t really promoting them. And Library News shows up on our front page, anyway.) But we could, of course, keep up this momentum and expand our virtual reach, via some subset of Twitter, LibraryThing, Facebook, GoodReads, and any number of other services. Some take more energy to learn than others. Some (like posting events to LibraryThing) one person could handle, while others (like minding the Twitter stream) are better done as a group effort. We’d have to talk about what, exactly, we wanted to look into doing, as a library. Maybe we could even find out what our users are using, before we wander off into this territory.

I did want to point out that there’s more to Web 2.0 than getting in touch with our own users, though I do think, at the library level, that should be the main thrust. At an individual level–with individual accounts–I really think we all have a lot we could learn from our peers. John Dupuis, a science librarian (Head of the Steacie Science & Engineering Library, actually) in Toronto, Ontario, certainly feels this way. He suggests that all librarians should have their fingers into some sort of social networking tools, just to keep up on what’s happening in libraryland, our user groups, and the world–it’s much too easy to get stuck in the day to day work one does and stop looking at the bigger picture, at our peers’ ideas, and at what’s worked (and not worked!) in other places. But, he cautions, there’s no reason to go overboard. He suggests limiting/stretching (as appropriate) oneself to participating in in two Web 2.0 services. (Mine, primarily, are Twitter and Facebook. And Google Reader, if you can call that Web 2.0–upon consideration, yes, you can. I poke my head into Ravelry from time to time, and I use LibraryThing, though that’s more a tool than a social medium, for me. I have a LinkedIn profile, but I don’t use it for anything, really. I have a MySpace profile, but only something like two friends. del.icio.us, again, is more tool than social network, for me. Yelp, too. … So I guess I’ve got a ways to go, to officially drop down to the Dupuis Number of social networking sites, if we’re counting any participation at , versus sporadic participation. I will say, you get very little out of a social networking site that you only put sporadic participation into; it has to become part of your day to be worth much. His rule of 2 is really spot on.)

Back to my point: There’s a wealth of other librarians out there, just waiting to network, learn from, and teach us, if we want to reach out to them. Freya Anderson uses Twitter’s new list feature to label Alaskan librarians, which I think is super cool. If you were to join Twitter and alert her to your presence, you’d automatically be linked up to other Alaskan librarians. I’m pretty psyched that someone took the initiative to make that list; it hadn’t really occurred to me, though I do have a list of Alaskans and a list of Librarians. In trying to learn LibGuides, I made one about Twitter. I’d be pretty comfortable doing a training on Twitter, too, if anyone’s actually interested.

Facebook, well, I tend to use that as a personal communication tool, mostly. Since it’s locked, whereas my Twitter isn’t, I communicate a bit more freely, there. (Just a bit. I’m actually pretty transparent, for the most part.) I don’t hesitate to friend coworkers, but I probably won’t friend librarians I don’t know, random students, or even other staff and faculty of UAA whom I haven’t personally met. That’s me. Other people do use it as a networking tool, really successfully.

In a lot of ways, I guess Web 2.0 is about boundaries. You have to set up rules for yourself in each medium, based in part upon how easy that medium is (or is likely to be) accessed. You have to decide what level of participation and time commitment you want, as well. The technical details of any particular Web 2.0 technology are usually not a big deal (though I could do a half hour training just on privacy settings in Facebook–they’re easy to figure out and all, but you have to know they’re there if you don’t mean it to be totally open to the world!).

I realized I’m kind of rambling, at this point. Hopefully, some of it made sense. If you’d like a more organized look into Web 2.0 for libraries, done by someone way smarter than I am, check out Jessamyn West’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About 2.0 But Were Afraid to Ask. It’s really fantastic.

EBSCO Mobile Interface

Taken verbatim from the AKLA listserv, which took it verbatim from a marketing letter.

Dear EBSCO Customer,

We are excited to announce that the anticipated new interface for mobile users, EBSCOhost Mobile, is here! The new EBSCOhost application is tailor-made for the smaller screens of mobile devices, and offers the most important EBSCOhost features and functionality, right in the palm of your hand! To get started on using your mobile device to access your EBSCOhost resources, simply review this FAQ and learn about:

• the many features of EBSCOhost Mobile
• how to access the application
• which devices are supported

Once you have created a profile in EBSCOadmin for EBSCOhost Mobile, this new interface will be available to all users who have access to your account. To help you alert your users, we have created posters that you can download and print; one of which includes a special, customizable message field. If you (or your library administrator) need assistance setting up a new profile for EBSCOhost Mobile, please communicate with EBSCO’s Technical Support Representatives online, via EBSCO’s Support Form, and remember to allow one to two weeks for setup time. For more information, please see this top story.

Also new on EBSCOhost are several enhancements to streamline the Alerts creation process, described here.

Visit EBSCO’s Support Site (http://support.ebsco.com) to learn about all of EBSCO’s products, search among thousands of FAQs, and download tutorials, Help Sheets or User Guides.

Sincerely,

Marcie Brown
Technical Communications Manager
EBSCO Publishing
10 Estes Street
Ipswich, MA 01938

NaBloPoMo – Say that 5 times fast!

NaNoWriMo icon

So, all of you that have blogs and keep “meaning to post,” stop planning to blog, and start blogging. Do it today and for the rest of the month! Or if you don’t have a blog, but are interested, get set up with one–it’s pretty easy, I promise! As for me, between this blog, the blog about the move, and the blog on my domain, I should be able to find something to say every day. (And, to be a purist, I suppose I ought to post twice today, since I didn’t know about NaBloPoMo yesterday…) Maybe I won’t actually manage it, but it’s certainly worth a try, anyway.

Fascinating.

(This is from an email sent to the LITA-L listserv, by Wilfred Drew. I feel like it’s worth sharing with the CL community.)

The newest study from ECAR (EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research) was just released on  Oct. 22.  “The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009.”

The key findings are quite interesting.  Here are a few of them:

Student Ownership and Use of Computers:

• More students are buying laptops than desktops.
• 79% of freshmen own a laptop one year old or newer.
• 2/3 of all students report owning a desktop or laptop 2 years old or newer.
• Almost 95% of students use the library website weekly.

Interactive Communication Tools
Surge in Social Networking websites (SNS) and text messaging :

• Over 90% use SNS.
• Almost 90% use text messaging.
• Use of instant messaging is down to 74% of students.

The complete analysis of key findings is at: EKF0906.pdf (application/pdf Object) .

The entire study is at: ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009.

Weeks 1-2

Hi, I’m Coral, the new Web Services Librarian. I plan to use this blog to write about what I’ve been up to, both for my own reference and to help keep the CL community up to date on the work happening on the website and intranet.

The big push, during my first week, was to acquire user accounts on all of our various systems–the Web server, shared network folders, the intranet, the library’s LDAP, UAA’s LDAP, the phone system, our content management framework (MODx), Help Desk, LibGuides, and a few of our library resources (Refworks, a database or two–that’s ongoing). I have a couple of root passwords, a couple of codes for accessing various systems, a number of database back-end logins, and an ever-increasing understanding of where the various components sit. Mike showed me some useful UNIX commands, to help get things done in the Web server. I learned how LibGuides work by putting together an example one about Twitter. And then the Help Desk tickets started coming.

My first site edit happened last Tuesday, when I fixed the ordering and wording of our various Ask a Librarian options, to match what was agreed upon in the Reference & Instruction meeting. It was a good way to kind of dip my toes in, as it were, since it was straightforward HTML inside MODx.

I also got into a few beefier changes, including moving the Distance Education section from where it used to sit into MODx. That showed me a lot about the structure of the site at large (as I was changing links in the file), a little about Apache config files, and a fair bit about the workings of MODx. (I’ll rave about MODx some other time, but suffice it to say: I like it.) With significant help from Mike, I also made a backup copy of Hasher and its MySQL databases, in order to implement a change that was asked for in a trouble ticket, without breaking the live system–not sure I’ll get all of these steps spot on, by myself, the next time I need to do this, because there was a fair bit to it, but it was a definite learning experience. The change itself involved putting back in some PHP code that had been taken out and then writing just a tiny bit more of my own. There was even a tiny CSS hack involved; it was fun, without being utterly brain-breaking.

I’ll make sure to let people know before I put my changes into the live version of Hasher. I think Hasher users will either like it or ignore it completely–it isn’t likely get in anyone’s way.

Scheduler also got a tiny update–I moved some resources, made a new “schedule” (group of resources), renamed a couple of things, and learned the funny way it handles access. That was pretty fun, actually.

I’m also learning about the back end of RefWorks, as citation importation needs a little update.

In less technical, but just as important, news, the Systems department had a meeting, where we discussed what was accomplished in FY2009 and what we’re aiming to achieve in FY2010, and I started working on getting together the Web Committee. I’m also pulling together an agenda for our first meeting, including proposals for a variety of short-term and longer-term upgrades to the CL’s Web presence. It’s hard, now and then, to pull myself out of the weeds and look at the big picture, but it can be a real energy booster, as well.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying the work, so far, and have appreciated everybody’s help and patience as I’ve been learning. I’ve still got a bit of the learning curve to conquer, but I’ll do my best to be up to speed as soon as possible!