Maryland Library Association Conference, 2013, Ocean City, Maryland

I attended the joint Maryland Library Association/Delaware Library Association Conference in Ocean City, Maryland, May 8-10, and it was, as usual, a very enjoyable experience.  I've attached my notes for each session attended below.  I take these short snippets to remind myself, post-conference, of interesting things I intend to follow up on.  The session on GIS this year was especially follow-up-worthy.  Tahirah Akbar-Williams, Robin Sinn, and I gave a presentation, "Scholarly Metrics," which went over very well (if I do say so myself!).

MARK'S NOTES FROM MLA/DLA, 2013:

Wednesday, May 8
Keynote:  Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.  Rainie's fascinating presentation provided an overview of a recent (Fall 2012) survey that the Pew organization conducted on library users' attitudes toward libraries and librarians, in particular, public libraries and librarians.  I'll not summarize what he said other than to say that the public confidence, trust, and satisfaction with libraries outshines any other American institution, including the military and the Presidency.  See for yourself, the full results are posted here:  http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/05/01/parents-children-libraries-and-reading/

Thursday, May 9
  9:00 - 10:15 Planning Social Media  [2]
University of Baltimore, Natalie Burclaff, Catherine Johnson
"Tweets, Posts, and Pins with a Purpose"
UBalt has NINE social media accounts!
Asked “why are we on social media?”
Anchored in Library’s mission statement
Created policies
Policy, implementation, goals, assessment
Policy should articulate your purpose
‘Quality matters”  “Use good judgment”  Copyright, FRPA, etc.  General guidelines
Then specific guidelines per social media technology
Your policies must work within your library’s culture
Implementation, policy in action
Stakeholder buy-in
UBalt has 12 Facebook admins!
All contributors must be on same page with respect to purpose and tone
Your actions should reflect your purpose
Goals, give support and direction toward purpose
Goals derived from Purpose
Goal:  Where are we going to go?
Objective:  How are we going to get there?
Strategy
SMART Objectives
Assessment:  Measures of success
Tools:  Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Klout (influence metric; Klout score)
Pay attention to what the numbers MEAN.  The numbers themselves are value neutral without the larger narrative

Offline social media:  UBalt has a VERY popular bulletin board.  Markers, students writing on it, etc.


  10:45 - 12:00 SCVNGR Hunt  [3]
Towson University, Sarah Gilchrist and Kimberly Miller
SCVNGR iPhone and Android apps
Geolocation-based games in libraries
“gamification”  applying game-like concepts to non-game situations
Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards
Games in library committee at Towson
Challenges, tasks, rewards, treks (several challenges linked together)
Create SCVNGR account to create profile with builder
Build a Trek, then add Challenges to it
Jane McGonigal TED talks about games and gaming
New Media Consortium, gamed-based learning
College & Research Library News, article by Gilchrist and Miller
Lots of libraries doing this
T3 Research Lab (Text, Tags, and Trust) at UMD


  2:00 - 3:15 Mapping the Way for Maryland Students  [4]
Washington College, Stewart Bruce
68 student employees.  Largest Undergraduate GIS program in the US
Interns
78+ total staff
Strong interest in GIS for K-12.  3 week long program for high schoolers
State of Maryland, statewide license for ESRI software for K-12. 2.5 Million $
BUT not for libraries!
Stewart has 10 seats he can give to libraries, and he will train librarians
Alternatives to ESRI:  Google Earth; Trimble Sketchup Pro; Autodesk; Unity; MapStory
geoworkshops.org  Free GIS training
Working on NSF grant, 1.5 Million
Demonstration of Unity
3D VR space


  3:45 - 5:00 Scholarly Metrics  [6]
Johns Hopkins, Tahirah Akbar-Williams, Mark Cyzyk, Robin Sinn
“Simply [superb]!”
“...one of the two or three...”
“I couldn't believe [it]...”


Friday, May 10
  9:30 - 10:45 Technology Update  [2A]
Delaware Technical and Community College, Paul Page
Using Prezi
Can embed within Powerpoint
Telling stories, uses a single canvas rather than linear slides
Online community, sharing
Dynamic, accessed from the Cloud or download locally (must sign up, costs money if you want to download locally)
You can zoom in with Prezi
Illusion of movement
Use for information literacy instruction
Fade in backgrounds, 3D themes, background music and voiceovers
Steep learning curve
No image editing
Limited fonts
100 MB included with free cloud-based account

Delaware Public Archives, Dawn Mitchell
Outreach to non-genealogists/historians using social media
YouTube videos, award-winning.  90 second videos
Video clips from the Archives, 50 of them
WordPress blog to highlight resources
Facebook, This Day in Delaware History
Put archival photographs up on Web
Twitter, This Day in Delaware History, Photo of the Day, Document of the Day
Hootsuit – lets you pre-upload content for Tweets
Pinterest
“Delivery” a free tool that will push content out to multiple social media resources
Postcard collection, dumped entire collection into Flickr

University of Delaware, Meg Groti and Sarah Katz
QR codes integrated into program for freshmen
First Year Experience seminar
Students scan QR codes, learn about library via Webpages designed for cellphones
Gameplay workshops, 4000 incoming students
I-nigma QR reader app
“How to locate a book using a call number” ← always the most confusing task for new students
BeQRious – QR code generator, generates QR codes in different colors


  11:00 - 12:15 Become a WIZ at Dataviz  [3]
University of Baltimore, Lucy Holman and Michael Shockett
Communicate information with very simple charts
Visual perception:  serial processing, and pre-attentive processing
Pre-attentive processing:  Size shape orientation concavity/convexity
Small visuals that tell the story
Emphasize pre-attentive patterns
Jacques Bertin, visual variables
Position; Shape; Orientation; Color; Texture; Value; Size
What kind of data do you want to show?  Marry that with the appropriate variable
Edward Tufte:
Present data; Focus on content; Avoid distortion; Create coherence; Reveal at multiple levels; Be transparent
Small multiples help tell the story
Graphics must be proportional to the data
Clear and comprehensive labels
Watch out for distortion.  Good examples from Tufte!

--Mark Cyzyk

Webwise 2013

I was at Webwise 2013. This year the format included more participatory and interactive sessions than usual. The theme was “Putting the Learner at the Center”. Sponsored by the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) and the CHNM (Roy Rozenzweig Center for History and New Media), the event offered many project sessions and preconference workshops as well as a keynote lecture and a Project/Partnership Incubator session.

 I attended  a presentation on Makerspaces. It was presented by  Nini Beegan, Carroll County Division of Library Development & Services; Lisa Brahms, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh; David E. Kanter, New York Hall of Science; AnnMarie Thomas, Maker Education Initiative. Inspired by Hackerspaces, makerspaces are learning environments that can happen in libraries or  museums, among other places. The interdisciplinary projects are implemented through a program that includes five elements: networks, project libraries, tools, learning labs, training and support communities, hardware and software tools.

I also attended was Juggling all the Pieces, Project Management for Beginners, presented by Sharon M. Leon, Associate Professor at George Mason University and Director of Public Projects at the Center for History and New Media. The workshop focused on strategy and planning for successful management and mentioned the use of Basecamp.

Another workshop I attended was on Digital Preservation and was presented by Robert Horton, previously State Archivist for the State of Minnesota and currently Associate Deputy Director for Library Services at the IMLS. The workshop explored the benefits and costs of digital preservation as well as challenges posed by issues of authentication, data ingestion, migration and curation. Legal and policy aspects of the field were mentioned. Horton talked about various approaches, including the Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model; the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC); the Library of Congress’ DPOE (Digital Preservation Outreach and Education) program; the CDL, California Digital Library’s UC3 Merritt repository service and its micro-services approach to data curation.

Apart from many other workshops, there was a Project/Partnership Incubator session in which people sat around tables with a facilitator and exchanged ideas of projects for their institutions, devising plans for implementation and for grant proposals (including crucial parts of planning such as identification of needs, audiences, stakeholders, etc.) Foster Zhang and I sat at the same table and mentioned ideas on digitization of brittle collections (like our library’s Schaechter gift) and on providing increased online access to the library’s collections in general.

The keynote speaker this year was free-lance writer Audrey Watters who posts on the Hack Education blog. In her talk, Whose Learning is it, Anyway? Watters reflected on technology and education, with thoughts on the links between use of computers in education, improv, and MOOC initiatives that, she reminded us, originated in artificial intelligence research.

Webwise was, as usual, a good opportunity to learn about trends, ideas and projects and meet professionals from various cultural institutions through the country.

Isabelle Kargon.

Code4Lib 2013 from Jonathan Rochkind

I again attended the Code4Lib conference this year; it is typically the only conference I attend in a year, and I do attend it most years. It's a great opportunity to network and share information with other software engineers in libraries.

On the first day, I attended and presented at a pre-conference on libraries that have innovated in their web services around "delivery" -- that is, what happens after 'discovery'.  I presented on the Umlaut software that powers our Find It service; Umlaut is open source software for which I'm the chief developer.  The pre-conference demonstrated that there's a lot of interest in Umlaut at the moment -- several other libraries, including Princeton, are exploring using the Umlaut software themselves. And other libraries are developing their own alternative software inspired by Umlaut.  As we've been using Umlaut for 4 or 5 years now, I think we can take pride in being ahead of the curve in paying attention to improving the access/delivery experience in ways Umlaut/Find It are intended to.  As I've been trying to raise interest from other libraries in Umalut for several years, it's gratifying to see it starting to happen -- and will result in more sustainability for Umlaut as a software package, to get more involvement.

Once the conference itself began, one trend I noticed was many presentations about projects based on Blacklight. Blacklight is the open source project that our own Catalyst is based on.  Blacklight seems to be only gaining in popularity, which again is encouraging for the sustainable future of the Blacklight project.

Many of these Blacklight projects were 'digital repository' type projects.  Penn State and other institutions are developing a product called "ScholarSphere", which is based on Blacklight, Fedora, and Hydra (another open source project in the Blacklight eco system). ScholarSphere was impressive for having one of the best User Interfaces in an IR or 'digital repository' product I've seen.

In the past, I always liked Code4Lib for being just about the only conference on library technology that focused on innovation in what I'll call "research services" as opposed to "digital repository" services and products. Accross libraries, I think "digital repository" innovation receives a lot more attention, funding, and resources.  It was hard to find the people working on innovation in research services too, which I think is also very important but doesn't get sufficient attention.  However, this year, even at Code4Lib fewer presentations than usual were on tech innovations in traditional research services, and more on digital repository services. Lately I have started to wonder if it's simply too late for libraries to succesfully innovate in research services, maybe the future of libraries really is solely in digital repository services.

Also, when I first started going to Code4lib, almost all of my peers there were from similar situations to me, in terms of being one of only one or two developers in the library, sort of eeking out development of innovative web projects in their 'spare' time, amongst support of existing systems.  This year, it hit me that quite a few libraries have extensive development staff these days. I couldn't help but be envious of libraries that have 10 or more developers working on developing new software, along with a handful of additional User Expereience staff, and additional completely seperarate staff supporting legacy products like the ILS.  Here at JHU we manage to do an extraordinary amount of innovation with our relatively paltry development staff (1-4 developers depending on how you count, who are generally also responsible for extensive user support and legacy system support too) -- but it definitely makes me envious of how much we could accomplish and innovate if we had the resources of those peer institutions who have prioritized extensive software engineering staff resources (examples include U of Michigan, Stanford, and North Carolina State University).

All in all, the Code4Lib conference remains crucial to my professional skill and awareness of trends and possibilities in library technological innovation and relevant technologies.

MLA 2013

The Modern Languages Association annual convention in Boston this year featured lots of sessions about the digital humanities, scholarly communications, libraries and collections, book history, textual studies and editing, as well as the usual sessions focused on literary theories, thematics and histories. It was maybe one of the best conferences I have ever been to.

Highlights:

• Loved the session on "The Literary Lab," even though it turned out to really be about DH center-type lab, not the laboratory as a paradigm for the classroom (which is why I went). 

• A roundtable on "The Dark Side of the Digital Humanities" was the source of much subsequent debate. You can read a summary in the Chronicle here.

• "The Digital Humanities and the Future of Scholarly Communication" included amazing talks by Matt Kirschenbaum, Cathy Davidson and Bethany Nowiskie; this panel was one of the special sessions related to the conference theme, "Avenues of Access."

• Michael Berube's Presidential address focused on the precarious place of adjuncts in the profession and the dismal outlook for grad students.  He also talked about disability and disability studies.  All these topics were linked, again, to the "Avenues of Access"  theme.  It was quite moving, and the Q & A featured a lot of folks simply thanking him for shining the spotlight on these issues. 

• Two good sessions sponsored by the discussion group Libraries and Research in Languages and Literature: a roundtable on "how many copies is enough" re: print collections and a provocative roundtable about joint degrees in library science and literature.

•  A session that is going to help me with the Crane exhibition, on William Morris and late 19th century arts and crafts publishing.

My sessions were well-attended and I was pleased to get a lot of positive feedback.

• First, for a panel called "Crossed Codes: Print Dreams of the Digital Age, Digital's Memory of the Age of Print," I gave a paper on extra-illustration largely based on materials at Garrett and the Peabody.  Looks like it will be published in Textual Cultures this fall.  

• I also organized a "master class" session called "Two Tools for Student-Generated Digital Projects: WordPress and Omeka in the Classroom," in which two practiced user-teachers, Amanda French and George Williams, led hands-on instructional activities to a group of about 50 people new to these technologies.

 Gabrielle Dean

Charleston Conference, November 2012

(by Sue Vazakas)

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BEST TIPS:

·         Link subject guides in 856 fields

·         Add “ask a lib” link or widget to web site 404 page

·         Change catalog location of e-books to say E-BOOK

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Pre-conference about E-books

•  Most users don’t read the whole book, like reference linking, and hate DRM     
  

•  Most publishers are still designing print and then converting to electronic

•  TRLN Consortium (Triangle Research Libraries Network) worked a deal with OUP – all 4 schools get a given e-book and one shared print copy. (Nancy Gibbs, Head of Acquisitions at Duke)

• Duke had many questions about e-book choices, processing workflow, etc., so they formed an E-book Advocacy group

• Before they started buying, they interviewed patrons, and then wrote a statement about how Duke can be advocates for patrons regarding e-books [PDF on the right]

• Duke also held an “E-book Boot Camp” for technical and reference staff, including overview, hands-on exercise, and how to find usage stats

• Texas A&M canceled their e-books packages and went back to choosing individual titles in GOBI to save money, and also went to PDA. Before doing any of that, they had a meeting of all the stakeholders to discuss.

• All speakers agreed that: (1) hiring new people and training of all personnel are crucial, (2) getting e-book records into the discovery layer as fast as possible, preferably daily, is crucial, (3) workflows will need to be disrupted, but lay it all out ahead of time and make sure that person/people in charge of e-book workflow(s) has project management experience

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Conference Opening Speakers   

·         CEO of MacMillan (which publishes Nature) – She talked about tools that help you organize your lab, help you with compliance, and share your results. Someone commented that nothing she talked about was publishing, but rather all software. She replied that she’s looking for a word to replace “publisher/publishing.”

·        
 

New publishing models – Smashwords (self-publishing), Unglue.It (crowdsourcing the funding to publish out-of-print books  

Quality products – Libraries should participate in this! The way to honor readers with self-published books worth reading is to offer instruction about good writing and editing.

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“Positively Perplexing E-books”

University of Florida Life Sci and Eng Library surveyed 321 undergrads and 64 grad students

• Over half of the students didn’t know what e-thing they were looking at

• They were shown a sample of 18 online resources, such as journal articles, e-books (like Springer), open web sites, the catalog, a gov doc

• Springer e-book: 47% said it was a web site; only 28% knew it was an e-book

• Google Books e-book: most recognized what that was, not only because of familiarity but because of the simple uncluttered screen

• ScienceDirect article – 37% said it was a journal article

• The kids are becoming “format agnostic”; they don’t know or care what kind of thing they’re looking at and just want the info

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“You Call That Perpetual?”

Libraries do a poor job of tracking perp access once something is canceled or goes to another publisher. Keep link resolvers aiming at things we have if it’s perpetual!

License language can be vague and incomplete; get firm statements from vendors (for example, don’t accept “TBD”) 

E-BOOKS: (1) Which edition is perpetual, new editions or only what we bought? [the old one could vanish from their site but if we didn’t buy the new one, we no longer have access to any edition] (2) Wiley/IEEE gives the author the choice of what happens to new editions. (3) We should set up alerts on e-book platforms so we hear about new things.

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PANEL - What Provosts Think Librarians Should Know

Funding is going down, and competition is going up (e.g., MOOCs, community colleges). They don't sleep well at night.

Help the provost know your story so that they’re prepared when board members returning from trips are loaded with buzz words; your provost needs to be able to answer them, and tell them WHY what we’re doing is important for the university

“Big Data” is crucial – Whoever has them and understands them is powerful. If we can tell the provost “I’ve got data; let me tell you about our library/our departments/how they’re working,” provost will love that

Don't come to the provost asking for money. Come to him/her to give information about their university

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“E-textbooks”

• In 2012 so far, e-textbooks have been $4 billion, which is only 6% of the total e-book market, so there’s much room for growth

• Students still prefer print textbooks; profs reluctant to use because the edition they want isn’t available online or they’re just not interested, but this will change

• E-texts are about 50% cheaper than print

• E-texts are better than print because you can get usage stats, they have links to data/videos, they have self-assessment tools (if you do poorly they create a remedial lesson!), and profs can see what the students read. But these must be accessible across devices, and allow highlighting/notes/copying.

• Companies providing online education and/or textbooks include Boundless,  Khan Academy, Cengage Mindtap, Yammer (allows working in groups and communicating with profs; used at ECU Dental School), VitalSource bookshelf, and Moodle 

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SCOAP3 Update – 2013 will be lots of calculations about what libraries pay now and signing of contracts; GO LIVE is January 1, 2014!

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“Well, of Course the Students Will Love Them!”

This Connecticut consortium of Wesleyan, Trinity College, and CT College did a small (28 undergrads) but in-depth usability study of various things including e-books.

• The librarians took video of what the students did on screen, and audio of them explaining why they did it

• There was a script; e.g., “What’s an e-book? Have you ever used one? Find one, and use one [on various platforms].”

• Depressing results – They didn’t understand most of the language or icons that *we* understand, they love scroll bars (none on eBrary), and most screens were much too busy (e.g., MyiLibrary). Things weren’t intuitive, things were buried, it’s a steep learning curve to use our tools, confused about limits on printing/downloading, confused about browser vs. platform functions

• They can *define* e-books but can’t find them or use them

• About half the kids started looking *outside* the library

• They wanted to print or download the whole book to read later or mark up

• Their wish list for the future: using touch to flip a page and take notes, more e-textbooks, share notes with friends and prof, more intuitive, have audio

• WE need to pressure vendors to include students in their usability testing!

• AFTER these interviews, the students’ opinions of e-books were higher (education is good!)

• Q/A – You’re buying e-books and set approval plan to “e- preferred,” but the kids are lukewarm, so why? Because usage stats are up so they’re voting with their feet despite what they say (or maybe they don’t know they’re using them)

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EBL Talk – Some interesting upgrades to the back-end, and they’re building in a reader for EPUB5/HTML5 for more interactive notes etc. (but don’t know when).

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Finally, here is a funny (yet a little scary) spoof from ACLU about how our privacy is pretty much nonexistent anymore. http://www.aclu.org/ordering-pizza