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