This cybertour takes citation tools and managers into the LibraryLabs for a stress test on how well they work with standard and unusual citations. Compare and contrast tools such as EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, and Papers to our databases and citation helpers such as EasyBib, BibMe, and even Word. Discover innovative ways to help researchers, students, and writers be more productive in managing their content.

The Reaching Across Illinois Library System decided to upgrade its simple website for the SHARE Illinois cooperative project to Drupal 8 when it was released in November. Hear about and see what we really like—and don’t like so much—about the latest version of the popular content management system.

Making decisions in libraries in tight economic times is always a challenge, and we don’t always use all the data we have to inform those decisions. This experienced librarian shares tips on getting data analytics from your library data to help with making decisions.

Have you ever had to write an RFP from scratch, work with vendors on a complex project, or even complain to a vendor about problems with their product? King shares the process his library goes through when choosing new technology and managing the project during installation. He also discusses effective ways to “get your voice heard” when something needs to change.

Although most of us have come to accept Google’s Page Rank and its other page signal analyses as legitimate ways to rank results, today’s searchers are being manipulated in new and powerful ways. Among the most influential of these behind-the-scene forces are the SEO optimizers—hear the good and the bad about these as well as other influences that impact your search. Get strategies for taking back control of your open web searching.

According to Outsell, the information industry generates more than $700B in revenue to the vendors servicing the library community. Academic libraries spend $7 billion per year. $4 billion of this on acquisition of products and technology to serve users. Libraries deal with hundreds, even thousands, of unique vendors every year. And budgets are generally flat or constricting. Gruenberg examines the economic value components and motivations from the vendor side of the negotiation process and how those drivers impact negotiations with libraries. Be better prepared for your next negotiation.

Open Library lends ebooks worldwide for free. It’s an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published.” This cybertour explains how this project of the Internet Archive mostly works and sometimes doesn’t.

Get an overview of how libraries, archives, and museums in Europe and the United States are engaging users in content creation to supplement digital resources. Memory organizations are increasingly relying on both “passion” and “expertise” from public participation for description and access points for digitized assets. This talk compares public transcription projects to crowdsourced identification work for digital resources and reviews crowdsourced mapping endeavors. It provides tips for smaller collections or user groups to inspire local communities, build and strengthen a userbase, raise awareness, and create conversation.

Finding critical content is as important as ever these days, with the various formats and sheer volume, but it is definitely a challenge. Using customer research, Wolter Kluwer found out what clients wanted. Hear how that research informed Wolters Kluwer and drove product changes.

As library offerings go digital, members and nonmembers rely on the library website for information and access. How do we encourage these digital visitors to walk through our physical doors? Get some tips and tricks for applying strategies and metrics from digital advertising, including user engagement, conversion, and reach, to turn web traffic into foot traffic.

Makerspaces in academic libraries pull from a range of influences, including Design Thinking, Hackerspaces, entrepreneurially motivated TechShops, and a heavy dose of Papert’s constructionism. In their synthesis and expression of this range of influences, makerspaces contain multitudes of possibilities. Hear how academic library makerspaces have aligned themselves with various influences while creating new models, seeking to better define not only what is meant by the term makerspaces but also to provide more nuanced understanding of the shapes that makerspaces take.

Hear how the GWU Gelman Library started an on-demand 3D printing program with two Makerbot Replicator 2X’s and one MakerBot Digitizer. Get insights from GWU’s learning experiences and challenges associated with implementing the program, and tips on explaining how 3D printing works, dealing with printing requests, and Makerware (the software that powers our machines).

The Reaching Across Illinois Library System’s Library Jobs Board began as a tentative, “easy to set up, so what the heck, let’s try it” addition to the RAILS website. If it didn’t take off, it’d be fairly painless to shut down. However, with very little development and maintenance required of RAILS staff, the Jobs Board quickly became the most visited area of the site by far. A look at the Jobs Board serves as a starting point for discussing key features of no-pain experiments.

In order to teach a large audience the basics of genealogy research, a university and state library entered into a yearlong partnership to develop RootsMOOC, a massive open online course (MOOC) for beginning genealogy researchers. This IMLS grant-funded project enrolled more than 4,000 learners. Get tips for developing, marketing & managing an easy, free, high-quality genealogy instruction in a highly interactive and social learning environment. Gain insights about fostering lifelong learning through MOOCs with partners, external organizations and an online community of learners.

Hear how students partnered with an information industry startup and what each partner learned!

In response to academic research being conducted on a mobile environment, our speaker developed a series of workshops focusing on iPad apps. With an iPad cart and 24 iPads the workshops immediately engaged the community to specialized program apps as sources and tools for academic research including note taking, file sharing, productivity, accessibility, writing, citing and collaboration. Get tips to use to engage your community.

This cybertour shares some tools and tips for keeping up with social media and using the results for other projects.

How do you keep the public knowledgeable on new devices and technology, let alone staff? Hear how one public library trained a combined staff of 485 at 21 branch locations with six devices that were purchased for each branch through public funds and a grant. From the library’s Digital Strategy guidelines, core competencies were developed which required all staff to become knowledgeable about these new devices and technologies. Additionally, staff were encouraged to learn how to use the new devices in their daily work routines and facilitate mobile technology classes to the public. Learn about the “Digital Point Person” role created to help facilitate learning and growth at each branch in an effort to spearhead this initiative and to encourage programming around the new devices.

Team science and globalization have dramatically changed research and research collaboration. Learn more about an effort to dynamically create researcher profiles (or CVs) using pulls from LDAP, PubMed, and other sources. These profiles are loaded into a networking tool based upon Harvard Profiles to foster collaboration across the entire Department of Health and Human Services.

Hear about the intersection of offline programs and online interactions through the lens of Donny's experiences at the Montgomery County Public Libraries.

Come learn how IMLS National Leadership Grant Awardee, Howard County Library System, is incorporating research into the development of STEM programming for its library branches. With more than 325 STEM classes (e.g., 3D animation, nanotechnology, music/video production, game apps, cybersecurity, green energy, robotics, infectious diseases) completed, get an idea of the framework for project development and delivery. Farrell includes other examples of STEM programming, resources, and ideas.

Tagtmeier discusses the recent surge in popularity of digital comics on the library scene. Companies such as Hoopla, iVerse, and Overdrive have helped to usher in a new era of ebooks for libraries with digital comics, but there are also self-published and crowd-funded projects that have pushed digital comics into a DIY type of phase. Hear about trends within the context of the library as being a place for users to act as both creators and collaborators (i.e., maker labs).