IL2007, Day 2: Encouraging and Building your Techie Team

Michael Stephens and Sarah Houghton-Jan
Building your techie team: tips for training staff - they were creative - this presentation was built around the word “experiment:”
Engage - use real world examples, stay relevant, highlight tips and tricks
Xenagogue - become a guide through a strange land, be available and accessible, encourage student independence
Play - encourage exploration, allow [...]

Great little article on bad IT practices

Go read the whole article at techrepublic… but here are two of their “10 dirty little secrets” about the IT department:
3. Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies
A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software [...]

OZSDUG Meeting and Demo of Rome

The Gordian Knot blog recently mentioned the OZSDUG (OZarks SirsiDynix Users Group) meeting that took place on June 5th… I attended the meeting - here are my notes:
First up, a SirsiDynix Sales Rep answered a list of pre-prepared questions:

Question - Can we trust SirsiDynix promises? Answer - “No.”
The company that bought Sirsi told them to [...]

Teaching Managers about Emerging Trends

Here’s something I’m doing at my library right now, and thought I’d share. The managers at my library meet every week (I’m a manager, too). Part of that weekly meeting is “my time.” We’ve been calling it simply “Cool Stuff” - I usually do a short presentation on a Web 2.0 product or concept, or [...]

Becoming a Technology Agnostic

I recently read an article about technology change on Lucas McDonnell’s unCommon Knowledge blog. This is definitely worth a read - especially for IT managers and IT departments.
Why? Lucas says this: “the increasing pace of technology change requires us to be more innovative in how we both adopt and maintain technologies,” and then provides some [...]

Great Tips on Customer Service

From the LibTalk blog, The Determinants of Delight - this is a great article! Candi talks about how to delight library customers, and has a wonderful list of ways to accomplish this:

Smile
Be really nice, all the time
Get back to them as soon as possible
Limit the times you say no
Emphasize the positive
Speak their language
Go above and [...]

IL2006 Day 1: Perfuming a Skunk, or there’s More than One Way to Skin an Online Catalog

Nanette… Champaign Public Library
First step: user survey on the website

what do you currently use
What types of enhancements would they like to see?
etc

Results? most came to use the online catalog, many ONLY came to use catalog - and many thought it was clunky.
Goal setting:

integrate online catalog into website
focus on ease of use

planning:

study what other libraries have [...]

IL2006 Day 1: Synergy for Better Services: IT and Library Cultures

Kathryn Deiss - Content Strategist, ACRLMatt Gullett, Technology Education Librarian, PLCMC
New technologies are changing possibilities and roles for both IT and library cultures and for library customers.
The players/actors: IT, Librarians, Customers…
Gave some definitions of organizational culture
Discussed definition of “we” - sometimes it’s IT, sometimes it’s MLS holders. It needs to be both!
Historic common ground - [...]

IL2006 Day 1: Creating Synergy between your Website and Catalog

Glenn Peterson, Hennepin County Library
OPAC Developments 2006:

ILS Customer Bill of Rights - blyberg.net
patREST - Blyberg developed this
NCSU/Endeca catalog
NGC4LIB - new listserv discussing next-gen catalogs
Catalog search everywhere! Amazon, Google, MySpace

Glenn mentioned these trends:

Go to userscripts.org - amazon and B&N scripts… add it to firefox
Personalized Google pages… include live search to catalog, Library news..
Myspace library search right [...]

Notes from Good to Great

I just skimmed the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, and want to remember a few things, sorta kinda about change management:
Pg. 89: “Spending time and energy trying to “motivate” people is a waste of effort. The real question is not, “How do we motivate our people?” If you have the right people, they [...]

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