Looking for a Web Developer

Wanna move to Kansas? We’re looking for a Web Developer:
“The Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library is seeking a creative, energetic Web Developer to help move our Digital Branch to the next level of sophistication. The successful candidate will help maintain and build-out tscpl.org, help develop specialty sites, build searchable databases, and work on web [...]

CIL2008, Day 1: Widgets, tools and doodads for library webmasters

Speakers: Darlene Fichter, Frank Cervone
Firefox tools:
safecache: protects privacy, defends against cache based tracking techniques
safehistory: protects your privacy by defending your history cache
FoxMarks: automatically synchronizes bookmarks
FEBE: Firefox Environment Backup Extension - syncs extensions between computers
Other webtools for collaboration
meebo chat widget
LInkBunch: lets you put multiple links into one small link
DocSyncer: automatically finds and syncs your document files [...]

CIL2008, Day 1: Fast & Easy Site Tune-ups

Speaker: Jeff Wisniewski
Keep content fresh
- Update your copyright date! You can use code to do this
- add a last updated script to your page (do it as an external script so you use one script in many places
- add photos to contacts! Goes a long way in increasing user’s trust in a website
Turn boring old [...]

SXSWi2008, Day 2: ExpressionEngine 2.0 Sneak Peek

Session by Ellis Lab, makers of ExpressionEngine, a CMS we’re using for our new Digital Branch.
Note to David - there’s an Ellis Labs party - t-shirts!
Goal - you should have control of the code and the design - design shouldn’t have to work around the CMS
They have paid support staff
They claim it’s becoming very popular [...]

New Digital Branch

Some of you might have noticed I’ve been dropping very vague hints on this blog about my library’s website redesign… well, no more vagueness! In fact - how about checking it out for yourselves? Go to webdev.tscpl.org and and see what my web team has been busy creating.
A few asides:

If something doesn’t work, most likely [...]

1000 True Fans - Can We Have 1000 True Patrons?

I just read 1000 True Fans from Kevin Kelly’s blog - great article! I suggest you go read it. And then come back! Because… I’m wondering… can that model work in a library/non-profit/website setting?
Here’s the gist of the idea presented in the article: for artists or creatives to make a living, they don’t really need [...]

No More Kicking

Remember my post from January, Kicking Users Out the Door? Interestingly, after my post (about worldcat.org and a poor user experience I had), I was contacted by two OCLC employees!
They realized that “Goodbye” was not the message they wanted to leave with customers, and asked me where I had seen it, what I was doing, [...]

Kicking Users Out the Door

When you request a book using OCLC’s Worldcat service, here’s what happens after you complete a request - you are presented with this message: “Your resource sharing request was sent successfully. Goodbye.”
What was that again?
Goodbye.
Is that REALLY the message OCLC wants to send after someone has requested a book through their service? Goodbye? What if [...]

Valuing Users by Allowing Comments

Casey Bisson said this during his Internet Librarian 2007 presentation: “sites that allow comments value their users.” When he said that, my mind started making connections… what a great way to illustrate why the ability to comment is such an amazing thing to include on a website! So riffing off that quote, here are some [...]

IL2007, Day 3: Building Web 2.0 Native Library Services

Casey Bisson (met him for the first time - nice guy!)
“Libraries are much larger than our books and our OPACs”
Catalog challenges:

usability
findability
remindability

We use Linux daily - it’s the dominant platform of most social web apps
IBM saves over $900,000,000 annually because of LInux
Scriblio.net (used to be his WPOPAC) - very cool. He’s making this easily available to [...]

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