Sunday, April 6, 2014

Now that our smart phones can search the web for us, how do info pros set themselves apart from anyone with access to Google? This full-day workshop brings the basic principles of hacking—curiosity, creativity, collaboration—to advanced web research. Searcher Academy allows you to interact with a series of industry experts, who share their search hacks and expertise in the field of web research. There’s always something new to be learned from these leading-edge info pros. Participants should have basic experience with web searching, but even searchers with an extensive searching background will come away with a new attitude and new resources and tools. Academy topics include:

• Hacking Google: Learn about the new and little-known search features that enable you to out-Google anyone... even your clients!
• Hacking the Deep Web: Today’s best techniques for identifying and searching the rich content within the deep web
• Hacking the Social Web: How to get the most value from social media, both for research and professional development
• Hacking Your Deliverables: What you can do with your search results to make the information even more valuable
• Hacking Subject Searches: Specific tools and resources for searching in a variety of specialized topics

This full-day, intensive, hands-on workshop is for new and novice Drupal users. It covers Drupal 6 and 7 skills, including installation, configuration, core functions, and theme development. This introductory workshop touches on most every aspect of the core Drupal framework: how to install Drupal and all the modules that a common site would use; adding, editing, and moderating content; creating user accounts and understanding Drupal’s permissions system; setting up menus and other design elements on a page; creating human-readable URLs; categorizing content using Drupal’s taxonomy system; and editing your own Drupal theme. Bring your laptop, and at the end of this Drupal day, you’ll have a simple but complete Drupal site.

Are you finding needed changes difficult to manage in your library system? Whether the changes are technological, policy, community orientations, reorganizations, or other, we meet with resistance—both passive and active. What can help? Whether you’ve been trying to implement a web engagement strategy using multiple social media reorganized around faculty and community liaisons for service and collection development, implemented a new technology, or anything that requires staff to change methods and behaviors, you’ve experienced the struggles. Workshop leaders have been involved with encouraging and managing both large-scale and small-scale changes for decades. They share some of the strategies and techniques that work. Cultural change is hard, but this transformation that libraries and the world are experiencing makes it necessary for many libraries. Choose this workshop if you need a process and philosophy for change management.

Lego Serious Play is a facilitated experiential process that encourages you to think through your fingers. The colorful bricks are the perfect tools for personal reflection, team building, and concept exploration. In this interactive and fun workshop, you participate in a series of build challenges and learn the fundamental approach to facilitating with Lego. You practice making your ideas tangible and experience how the popular children’s toy can be a catalyst for learning. Come play and learn!

Library collections today have become more complex than ever, with proportions of electronic and digital resources increasing relative to print and other physical materials. To manage these complex, multiformat collections, libraries need to consider many different options, both in the technology tools used and in their operational workflows. Many different types of technical options are available for libraries to manage their collections and operations, including traditional integrated library systems and a new generation of library services platforms, with open source and commercially licensed options and locally installed or cloud-based deployment possibilities. This half-day workshop explores the realm of library resource management technologies, helping attendees understand the relative strengths of each of the many alternatives and which automation scenarios may be most appropriate to pursue for their library. Filled with real-world examples, this workshop presents many possible strategies, technologies, and possibilities for managing library collections.

This half-day workshop, taught by a longtime project manager, explores the elements of successful project management and how projects might best be planned, implemented, and monitored. Aimed at anyone responsible for managing a project within their library or information organization, this interactive workshop encourages participants to share their own experiences and knowledge. It discusses key factors related to successful project management, methodologies and tools, proven techniques, and tips for managing projects.

This interactive workshop shares what libraries have done to renovate their spaces, and participants are expected to share their experiences. It discusses the reasons to renovate and change, different innovative methods to do such things, uses statistics, and facts about why and how changing and renovating spaces, including forward-facing books shelves, remapping layouts/moving furniture, the need for sitting, and the need for fab labs or hacker spaces, can improve the collection. Bring photos of your library, and help us brainstorm ways to improve and change our structures, hopefully all at low costs!

Technology has changed the face of libraries, and is continuing to change how we work and how we deliver services to customers. This workshop introduces emerging technology trends, and how those trends are re-shaping library services. Examples of how to incorporate these emerging trends into libraries are provided. Attendees learn what trends to look for, the difference between a technology trend and a fad, and will have ideas on how their library can respond to emerging technology.

Prototyping services for active, creative, and potentially bookless library spaces is an increasingly important activity in our digital future. The 4th floor of the Chattanooga Public Library is one of these spaces: It is a 14,000 square-foot public laboratory and educational facility with a focus on information, design, technology, and the applied arts.While it functions as a makerspace, hackerspace, and meeting space for the community, internally, the 4th floor serves as a beta space for prototyping and piloting new library services for use across the whole library system. This half-day interactive service design workshop uses a series of exercises and interactions designed to generate useful, actionable new services and service models. Attendees build with Legos, write, draw, and have tons of fun thinking of all the new things possible in the creative library space. You definitely take home something you will be dying to offer as a beta service in your library.

Responding creatively to problems is critical to success, yet many people don’t know how to start. What can you do to overcome the status quo and identify exciting new directions? This active learning workshop highlights four simple strategies which lead to more inventive thinking: exploration, observation, investigation, and visualization. Learn tips and techniques that you can use to teach your library to be more creative. By making innovation a more deliberate and pervasive part of your organization, you’ll be amazed at how you can generate ideas more quickly, boost overall productivity, and build high-performing teams. It’s time to regain your creative confidence.

Libraries face daunting challenges in providing access to library resources in ways that both meet the expectations of library users and librarians. Library users today expect simple, powerful, and intuitive interfaces that provide instant access to information resources. Librarians advocate for precise as well as general search capabilities, to optimally expose users to print as well as electronic resources, to take full advantage of the investments made in all categories of library materials, and to operate objectively without bias to any given publisher’s content. This half-day workshop explores the realm of library resource discovery services, helping attendees develop or refine strategies that can be applied in libraries as they evaluate, select, and implement these products.

Want to learn how to design and build responsive websites with Foundation? This hands-on workshop teaches you to control layout using the responsive grid system, apply Foundation’s CSS to HTML elements, and incorporate select Foundation custom jQuery plug-ins. Learn how to configure and download Foundation; control page layouts; add common page elements using Foundation’s core CSS and customize the CSS; create navigational menus with Foundation (Top-Bar, Side-Nav, Breadcrumbs); incorporate jQuery plug-ins with Bootstrap, including Reveal (modals), Orbit (image carousel), and more! Additional topics, time permitting, include web font icons, responsive multimedia elements, CSS customization, and CMS integration. Participants are expected to have basic HTML and CSS skills and must bring a laptop/notebook configured with a text editor for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Our presenter will use either Coda2 (mac) or Aptana Studio 2 (Mac or PC). However, you can use any text editor you’re comfort- able with. Workshop materials and demonstration site are available at http://atyourlibrary.com.

This half-day workshop, led by an expert who worked with Microsoft, is filled with practical exercises in strategic interviewing, uncertainty identification, and uncertainty curation. Rasmus leads a discussion on how best to integrate uncertainties into strategic planning so that organizations can make better decisions even when they know they don’t have all the answers. He shares a set of scenarios based on his research so that attendees can see how the recognition and engagement with uncertainties can help organizations navigate the future more effectively. Get a basic knowledge of scenario planning, gain practical experience with strategic interviewing, and understand how to identify and document uncertainties.

Libraries are full of ideas and innovations. As the role of the library in our communities changes, operational boundaries and departmental lines blur. Project management is more important than ever. So how does a modern library technology or marketing department implement a project management discipline? At what point does a task become a project? Why is planning documentation important? How do we focus on planning when we are itching to start the work? How do we plan a high-impact launch? This workshop outlines the defining factors of a project, as well as the key elements of successful project management, and provides real-world examples and practices.

Join our gamers and gadget lovers for an evening of fun, playing, learning, and networking. See how you can transform your thinking, your programs, and your spaces with the latest games, gadgets, and ideas! Share with a poster about what your library is doing with creative making and makerspaces in your library. Led by Brian Pichman, Meg Backus, and Stephen Abram, this event will start your conference experience with lots of learning and laughing! Refreshments included.