David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Archives for October 2017

My presentations at Internet Librarian 2017

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Here’s what I talked about at Internet Librarian 2017. You can find slides to many of the talks here.

 

The apps talk isn’t something I necessarily believe in – this was part of a fun Tuesday evening program. I argued for apps, and Marshall Breeding argued (successfully) for websites. It involved costumes. You had to be there 🙂

Internet Librarian 2017, Day 3

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And what I heard on Day 3 of Internet Librarian 2017. There’s one pore post coming up – links to my presentations. Hope you have enjoyed this brief little glimmer into what happens at Internet Librarian!

I moderated a track focused on innovation and learning. Lisa Carlucci Thomas (@lisacarlucci) was up first, talking about Creating a Culture of Innovation.

Lisa works at the Center for Social Innovation. She was brought on as a product developer, had to quickly hire a bunch of people for the project.

Moved from original development to using Adobe Captivate to create their interactive learning modules. Found out Captivate could not meet their accessibility requirements.

Using LibGuides for other non-library projects. Cool!

Also making some mobile-first products. So, lots of web development work.

Innovative things they have tried that have helped their team be more productive:

  • The CEO decided to make all meetings short – no more than 15 minutes. That sense of efficiency helped them work in different and better ways.
  • Jira – a Kanban board. It helps with issue tracking and helped them streamline their process.
  • Slack – it bombed with her team when it was first introduced. Second try it worked better. Lisa added some channels focused on their products, etc.
  • Also use Asana, Coggle – a mind map product (https://coggle.it). Boards – a storyboarding product, and Zepplin.

I spoke next – yes, I moderated myself 🙂

Kim Huntley and Heather Mathis talked about changing models/roles: competencies & professional development insights.

They had a changing service environment in the Toronto area… they had a real need for training.

They did a lot of telephone interviews to find out what their community wanted. They noticed a lot of similarities in things their customers wanted to be changed.

For staff, did a time on task study. That helped them figure out what their staff focuses on, what they spend time on. Surveyed 100 public services librarians.

They started a new professional development program. Librarians complete 6 learning activities each year, and have to talk to their supervisor about it.

Some innovative things they are doing include:

  • Community librarians (embedded idea): Work on site at partner agencies like correctional services, community and family centers, etc.
  • Book a librarian service – 3200 sessions booked in 2016. 30-60 minute appointments with a librarian for assistance on research, technology, etc.
  • Learning catalyst – support self-directed continuous learning – teaching and learning styles, service animator, tech, evaluation, curriculum development…
    • Ex – digital innovation hubs. Have staff who help people with different types of tech.
    • Ex – pop-up learning labs. Mobile stuff – iMacs, coding kits, 3D printers, etc – they move it from branch to branch for a month. Comes with a staff member! They lead classes, help everyone figure out the stuff, etc.
    • Ex – after school youth hubs – homework help, food, big social elements. Equipment there too. DJ equipment – stuff that engages kids in learning.
  • Culture Creator – connecting people through cultural activities. Space animator – being able to animate spaces.
    • Ex – dance – classes, etc then performance – might do that for a period of time
    • Ex – poetry saved our lives program – spoken word. Learn how you create it, then compete. Big local names help out with this. 600 kids participated!
  • They call their roles space and service animators – love that idea! It’s a way to help staff understand they need to be active in those spaces. For example if they work in the makerspace, they should be actively making something. That way, interested patrons can ask what they are doing, which helps draw people into using the space.
  • Community activator – respond to unique community needs
    • Ex – welcome to the library event – for syrian refugees. An evening of music and information. Helped welcome them to their new home, and feel welcome in Canada.

Technology integrates into all these roles.

Last session – at the top of google search results – Trey Gordner, Corinne Hill, John Andrews

Trey: what is SEO, what is paid search, what are google ad grants?

Started out by explaining what organic and paid search is in Google.

This session was basically how to start using

https://www.google.com/grants/ for nonprofits in a library setting. It’s free for nonprofits, and there’s a way to get a public library (usually a government entity) into the program.

Do people actually click on ads? Yes, 5-15% of the time. Especially on mobile. Especially for products and services. This is trending up because Google wants you to click on the ads.

The Google Ad Grant program gives you:

  • $10,000 a month in ads
  • 250,000 views
  • 10,000 clicks

They shared some great results, including:

  • Ad for free ebooks for your Kindle from the library. Got 1500 views a month, 9% click through rate. Also a Spanish ad for ESL classes – 100+ views a month, 9% click through rate
  • Passport processing agency ad (Chattanooga does this) – 1500 views a month, 75-100 clicks a month
  • Resume help – 1500 views per month, 33% increase in use of their resume help service after 1 month

They also use LibraryAware as a book list site and create ads for those curated lists. Cool!

 

Internet Librarian 2017, Day 2

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Here are some highlights from Day 2 at Internet Librarian 2017.

Amy Affelt (@aainfopro on Twitter) spoke about Internet Search Tips & Tricks

Her tips mainly revolved around making your activity on the web a bit more private. Some of her tips included:

  • Using https://panopticlick.eff.org/ from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to see how well your web browser and add-ons protect you against online tracking techniques.
  • Use web browsers in their private browsing mode (i.e., Chrome’s Incognito mode).
  • Use Duck Duck Go instead of Google search, but start the search with a ! at the beginning of the search. That makes Duck Duck GO search Google, but using Duck Duck Go’s features.
  • Use a VPN
  • Use ad blockers and traffic blockers
  • Potential border crossing smartphone handovers, asking to look at your social media accounts. Take a burner phone instead.

Bobbi Newman was up next. Some highlights from her talk included:

She defined what privacy in an online world means:

  • Information collection – all that data
  • Processing of that information and data
  • Dissemination of that data, i.e, in order to use it or sell it
  • All of this is an invasion of privacy

Bobbi mentioned that if you are tech-savvy or more well-to-do, you have a better chance at privacy. [edit by DLK – thanks Jill for pointing that out!] Minorities and the poor are subjected to more unwarranted surveillance.

The last session I attended was Frank Cervone explaining Blockchain.

It was very helpful! Some highlights:

  • Blockchain is a network where transactions can be validated in a secure environment
  • And they are validated forever
  • It uses peer-to-peer technology (Tor networks and BitTorrent are other peer-to-peer systems) – supposedly there’s no single point of failure this way.
  • Bitcoin was originally designed around cryptocurrency (i.e., BitCoin)
  • It helps to embed trust rules inside each transaction, instead of doing that outside the transaction
  • There are some companies/projects starting to build blockchain-enabled apps. Etherium and OpenChain are two examples.
  • Problems with Blockchain – the chain grows as more transactions are added, and can eventually become unsustainable. It can also take more networking power to process, especially when those chains get longer.

Internet Librarian 2017: Day 1

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I love attending and talking at Internet Librarian – I always learn new stuff and meet new people (new to me, anyway!). Good times.

Here are some highlights from a couple of talks from day 1.

Keynote presentation – we heard from a digital artist named Eric Chan. He shared his story with us – what he does and how he makes connections that allow him to do digital art in fun ways (like designing art on a coat, doing a mural, working on a branding project, etc.).

He said a few things that really resonated with me.

One of the themes of his talk was to not be afraid to make connections. that’s how he gets to do a lot of the cool and interesting things he does – he meets people, talks to them, shares what he does, and asks to collaborate with them.

I think that sometimes as librarians, we feel we don’t have permission to ask, or tend to hold back and not make those useful face to face connections. Eric is successful because he doesn’t hold back. Let’s be a bit braver, make those connections, and see what happens.

Eric also mentioned that digital amplifies things. Specifically, digital amplifies scalability, connections, creativity, and collaboration. Something all libraries should consider when working on new digital-based projects.

I also attended Roy Tennant‘s talk about Linked Data. Still trying to wrap my head around this concept, and Roy’s talk helped a lot. He explained why we need Linked Data (so our catalog records can be linked out to the wider world and have context outside of an ILS). He also said “if you don’t have links, you don’t have linked data.” Simple enough, and I never thought about it exactly that way.

He also said that card catalog records were made for description, not discovery. That made a lot of sense to me, and helps explain a lot about what’s needed going forward.

Basically, Linked Data is just getting started. Roy said most of us just need to wait for the vendors to figure it out, and that it’s a major transition that will take years to navigate. Should be interesting!

SO there you go – Day 1 of Internet Librarian 2017. Fun times!

 

NDP at Three

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On Tuesday, I participated in the IMLS NDP (National Digital Platform) at Three meeting. It was a good day of learning more about NDP and IMLS, and all the amazing projects that IMLS funds.

For starters:

So what happened? The day was divided into 5 panel discussions – smart people sharing what’s happening in these five areas. The panels included:

  1. Building digital cultural heritage capacities
  2. Expanding digital cultural heritage capacities
  3. Opening scholarly communications
  4. Museums and the NDP
  5. Going forward – what’s next

During each panel, 3-5 panelists who are doing projects (or know stuff) related to those areas shared their thoughts, then the floor was opened up to questions. The first four panels largely discussed what is in the NDP at Three report linked above, plus added some personal insights. 

The last panel focused on what needs to happen next. Panelists focused on ideas like figuring out how to handle what they called “modern manuscript collections” (i.e., collecting and preserving Snapchat conversations, Slack conversations, email archives, etc); helping people navigate personal digital archiving; how to expand the concept of library as platform; and the age old idea of helping our communities see value in libraries.

And a bunch of other ideas.

What were my take aways from the day?

I didn’t know that IMLS NDP funded all this stuff! I’m certainly familiar with many of these projects (or these types of projects). For example, I know libraries working on issues related to data privacy and security, mini hotspots and better broadband access, TV whitespace use, gigabit networks for libraries, training and convening to help create better ideas, big data, open access, repositories, and digitization projects of all types.

But I didn’t really connect IMLS NDP to all of these projects. But it totally is! Good to know.

Also – there are a LOT of institutions doing a lot of great things – but sorta on their own. Yes, they might have a project partner or two. But some of these projects could be made better, and have better sustainability, if they connected more directly with other organizations doing similar work, and maybe even sharing what they do with each other to build something better and bigger than they could on their own.

That’s not really happening – it’s all silos. Which one the one hand makes a lot of sense. After all, theses are all individual institutions creating grants for their individual projects.

On the other hand, this IMLS program is called National Digital Platform – this seems to hint at … well … a National Digital Platform. So … shouldn’t there be more than individual projects taking place? Some of their funding certainly addresses that – DPLA is a recipient, for example. But certainly not all. Not really a criticism – just an observation after the fact.

Otherwise, I learned a TON about what IMLS does for libraries and museums in the digital realm – pretty amazing stuff!

Image from IMLS