Thursday, March 10, 2016

Nearly three-quarters of Americans describe themselves as “lifelong learners.” More than two-thirds learn for personal enrichment and enjoyment. More than half are professional learners who are anxious to upgrade their skills and prepare for the next-wave workforce. Rainie presents new survey findings about the vast numbers of Americans who want and need to learn things and how libraries fit into their experiences and expectations. He discusses how digital resources inside and outside the library are crucial for many people and what that means for the ways librarians should think about serving these knowledge-society citizens.

Nearbles, sendables, or extendables: Beacon technology is a new way to reach your patrons on their mobile devices inside or outside the library. Get the basics; hear about current and planned uses of the beacons inside the library and “off-site”; and find how the beacons work, how the app interacts with the beacons and ILS, and the legal maze and patron privacy issues that arose during development.

We brainstorm all the time, but do we do it correctly or well? The answer is, “No.” There are techniques and rules to help us get the most of out the brainstorming that we do. This session begins with a review of seven rules that will instantly improve your brainstorming effort. Speakers share several brainstorming techniques, including mind-storming, the long list, and brand-storming. Participants then use these techniques to brainstorm new innovative services, technology uses, and training tactics for their libraries. The results of the brainstorms will be documented and posted online for the larger CIL community.

As a creative space, libraries are frequently producers of content. Come hear from Foster (Let’s Talk Learning Spaces) and Coleman (T is for Training), who have used their academic and public libraries as a launchpad for creating podcasts. They discuss the buy-in needed for such an endeavor, the technology concerns, how to turn an idea into an ongoing effort, and what the impact has been on them and their institutions. 

In recent years the Internet has moved many traditional library services to a self-service model. Many services that once required a librarian are now available directly to the user via licensed content and other web-based tools. This means that librarians must reinvent themselves and begin to offer new services if they expect to remain relevant. Hear about new services that science librarians are beginning to offer including scholarly communication services.

HCL communicates proactively with its users via channels, including online reference and feedback forms, social media, and usability testing. With an ongoing partnership with the U of MN to conduct usability testing, HCL’s understanding of its users and the process of user engagement has increased. Hear what an involved online audience means for HCL, get lessons learned about user engagement, and insights into how it can increase the value of the services libraries offer.

Everyone’s end goal is to thrive by serving users effectively and efficiently, but how do you determine the long-term value of short-term and short-lived, discounts, or cheap price tags? How do you design your partnerships with vendors? Open source? Tools? Services? Where to collaborate and when to do it alone? Abram shares proven tactics and strategies pertaining to digitization and beyond on how to decide which opportunities to support, fund, or avoid.

Here are two innovative case studies. Tagtmeier shows how libraries are helping local authors wind their way through self-publishing and provides a practical demonstration of the steps to publish an ebook through Amazon’s Createspace. Tryon’s initiative replaces the old notion of the bibliography. Librarians can now collect citations about a particular topic, encode the related texts using the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium’s guidelines and freely curate materials online.  Hear how Tryon is using the XML editor <oXygen/> to text-encode articles, books, and other materials to create a searchable database for the genus Rosa.

University of Maryland University College is replacing traditional textbooks and other student-purchased course materials with online open educational resources (OERs) and other no-cost digital materials for all undergraduate classes. Presenters discuss the library’s role in the technical and organizational infrastructure, issues that arose, and best practices that evolved. These projects cause much stress for all involved. Springfield College School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS) also transitioned to OER. The library collaborated with administrators to offer a broad selection of information sessions and support services that eased the transition process for worried faculty while simultaneously educating them about the benefits of OER. As a result, buy-in and success rates increased while stress levels decreased throughout the early stages of a significant cultural shift.

Panelists share their experiences and best practices for curating collaborative content and creating partnerships around digital content.

NCpedia, North Carolina’s encyclopaedia, is into its second decade online, with the past 6 years in Drupal. From 2012 to 2014, NCpedia expanded incredibly, integrating more than 5,000 articles from multiple content partners along with more than 20,000 entries from the North Carolina Gazetteer. This session shares the “how-to” and toolkit from the research and redo process, including using free and open-source technologies; evaluating emerging trends and best practices; conducting needs assessment research and usability studies; employing design strategies and techniques; use of web analytics for determining ROI and impact; listening, learning about, and engaging audiences and users through social media; learning when to make small vs. big changes; and addressing sustainability in updating old content and developing new content and partnerships.

Learn how to use open data, GIS, and various statistics as part of your budget justification and to effectively communicate with your outside stakeholders. Hear about free, readily available tools and statistics that you can use. For newbies who would like some help getting started and have no previous GIS experience, strong math skills are not expected!

With more and more students coming to its campus equipped with mobile devices, specifically iOS devices, Georgetown College wanted to develop a research tool that students could access with the tap of an icon. Working in collaboration with teaching faculty from three different departments (English, World Languages, and Graduate Education), an iOS application called Research Genius was developed. Comprised of three modules, Research Genius provides students with an introduction on what it means to do academic research, what is involved in the research process, and how to properly cite source and avoid plagiarism. Each module contains a pre- and post-quiz to help assess what students may know at the outset and what they have learned after completing the module. This presentation explores the different frameworks used to develop this app as well as plans for the app moving forward.

Scratch, the visual programming tool built to introduce technology to kids, provides a platform for young learners to experience and grow in their ability to think creatively and problem solve as they create computer games, stories, and animations. Stringing scripts of code together, Scratchers are able to build and share their own portfolio of projects. Since 2012, Clifton Park-Halfmoon Public Library has offered several types of Scratch programs for community members ranging from third to eighth graders: week-long summer camps; monthly consecutive day sessions; and, new this year, a 6-week after-school program. Its programs have sparked the creativity and ingenuity of more than 450 students to build projects that entertain, educate, and inspire others. This session discusses expansion to other age groups, curriculum, technology, and logistics required to offer a hands-on, kid-sized software development team experience for your young patrons. Examples of the Code Crew’s software products will inspire you to launch a middle school coding club at your library today!

Rapid change. Dynamic communities. Real-time results. Drilling, digging, and sifting are no longer reserved for pickaxe- wielding miners; these are the tools at the “lab” of the modern information professional. With more than 9,309 records for U.S. public libraries in 2013 alone, unearthing gold—insight into your library, activities, and patrons—begins with understanding how to do quick-and-dirty data mining by finding, analyzing, and visualizing relevant datasets. Speakers discuss tools such as the statistical analysis tool R (free, open source), MS Excel, heatmaps, geographic visualization, and more. They also share studies and analysis of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) public library survey data from 1992–2013, analyzing U.S. trends from resource acquisition and bookmobiles to staff salaries and number of ALA-M.S.L.I.S. degree-holding librarians. Future research is aimed at integrating census data and creating a toolkit specially tailored to enable the analysis of public library and free open national data so public libraries too can continue transforming business insights into actionable library ethos. Speakers also report findings from analyzing network structures of three 2015 academic conference tweet networks (CIL DC, IFLA, and SAA), combining approaches of information retrieval, text mining, and network analysis. This ensemble of techniques is a methodological step forward in the information science community, understanding internal information-sharing practices as well as a means of arriving at insight with multimodal methods for analysis of Twitter data from academic conferences.

Get an overview of journalistic tools that the library can use to create new and strengthen existing audiences. Complex information and interdisciplinary subject matter can be easily aggregated and disseminated via emerging technology with an engaging customer experience. The topics covered include new uses for Twitter, digital newspaper platforms, interactive timelines, and other resources.

Higgins discusses his approach to the development of a successful social media strategy and how he’s applying his years of for-profit techniques to the not-for-profit world of public libraries. He focuses on content marketing and best practice methods to grow/reach your audience. He covers techniques to overcome the dreaded Facebook algorithm, common missteps in content marketing to avoid, cool (and free) tools that help amplify your message online, and what to measure and why.

Hear about the strengths and weaknesses of some of the less-used (by libraries) social media platforms. Learn about the cool things brands and individuals are doing that might work for libraries. See how different communities use social media differently. Share your ideas and experiences in testing new social media outlets at your library.

How do you balance between personal and professional social media personas? Which platforms are best for staff members to develop their own voice? And how do you help staff navigate their own professional brands? Zealand & Bower answer these questions while our second speakers share ways libraries are using Twitter to make major announcements, deal with crises in their communities, and more.

Our first speakers look at strategies to use to reach geographically and demographically diverse audiences in your community, share how to determine whether a platform is working for the library and its community, and discuss the kind of analytics that are effective with social media. Our second presentation explains how a library can use Meetup to find like-minded people and create and grow an online community. The last presentation focuses on using social media at library events and explores ways to leverage your social media outlets to create extended community around your events and programs, for instance, having a live tweet with an author. Get lots of ideas and tips to strengthen your social media strategy.

Libraries traditionally have had strong concerns about and protections for user privacy, but social media creates new challenges for managing issues of privacy and free speech. This session explores how public libraries are writing social media policies to address free speech and privacy issues. A study of 125 public library social media policies is discussed, offering insights into social media policy writing to address employee and user free speech rights and privacy issues, and a model social media policy is provided for use by libraries.

Despite challenges and disruptions, many of the skills, talents, and attributes that librarians possess are prized in the current organizational world. Some indeed have become trendy and fashionable. We need a new way of thinking about and conceptualizing what we do, how we do it, and who benefits from our work. Rosenstein has devised a new framework for rethinking and repositioning this work, one that relies not on functional areas, but benefits, positive results, and outcomes. Librarians and information professionals exemplify and embody the following 10 qualities, attributes and abilities, each of which are valued and prized within today’s organizations: serendipity and “aha” moments; the power of questions; packaging and “selling” relevance; curation of data, information and knowledge; sense-making skills; the power of introverts and “quiet”; servant leadership: the power of service; discovery; architecture; and healing. We must embrace, express, and “own” these attributes and qualities for our future success. Libraries can only be successful if librarians are successful and thriving, so join us as Rosenstein demonstrates how librarians can reposition their work within this framework, and how it can be turned into a future advantage for the profession.

People do not resist change because of a fear of change itself; rather, they resist change from a more personal fear of what an organizational change will do to them personally. Get tips and techniques on service innovation and change from an experienced librarian and consultant with experience in all types of libraries.

Hear how a consortium of 14 libraries founded on the principles of resource sharing and collaboration to benefit all libraries created a library collection analysis system. They have a strong history of innovation which began with the development of the CARL integrated library system, Gold Rush one of the first electronic management systems and the latest development a Library Catalog Comparison system, LCCS. This talk discusses how the LCCS is used in our consortium for content management and analysis, how libraries outside of the consortium have used it, the underlying cutting edge software that powers the system, the future expansion and growth of the software and the pros and cons of developing your own system versus licensing a commercial product.

Panelists discuss real-world common and unusual training mishaps and pitfalls.They emphasize ways they mitigated those situations and what they implemented to ensure that the same challenges would not happen again in the library, off-site, and online. Get a checklist designed to help any trainer/teacher/learner prepare for and cope with failures that occur in the learning process. Topics include how to stay one step ahead of your learners, what helps to stay calm as things are falling to pieces, and when to call in the cavalry. Bring your questions and examples of times when things didn’t go all that well for you and your learners so you can leave with concrete strategies to implement as you prepare your next learning session.

Project Outcome offers an innovative and easy-to-use online platform for public libraries to measure the outcomes of their programs and services. Staff are able to view their results in an innovative and interactive data dashboard almost immediately, allowing them to respond quickly to insights gained from member feedback. For the first time, public libraries have free access to an aggregated set of performance measurement data and analysis tools they can use to affect change within their communities and beyond. This session provides an overview of the tools and shares lessons learned from libraries using Project Outcome.

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).