IL 2008 Day 3 Wrap-up

Okay, like wow! What a great day to end on–lots of fabulous speakers and great information.

Best presentation: Way too hard to pick today, although I have to give props for the great interactivity of the Making Movies presentation by Sean Robinson and Kaye Gregg. I mean, in what other presentation are you actually going to be an actor in the filming of a video? I especially loved the librarian mosh pit scene at the end! Rock on librarians!

Wireless update: I was in the Steinbeck Forum all day today and had zero problems with the wifi. Such a relief when you are blogging live and I am sure all the people tweeting appreciated it too!

Overall: Amazing conference. I loved it! I will definitely be coming back again. Next task is getting my library to implement some of the great tools that were presented here at the conference. I feel so excited about the possibilities out there. Oh, and massive props to our keynote speaker, danah boyd–great research and energy (even if parts of it went by too quickly for me to capture fully in my notes! )

Meta, Final Take Home Message: Librarians rock; Web 2.0 tools rock; but together we completely rule! Oh, and go try something new–you might have some fun, your patrons might have some fun and you might create a service or resource that is fabulous. Can’t wait for IL2009!

What's Hot in RSS & Social Software: IL2008

What’s Hot in RSS & Social Software
by: Steven Cohen

tinyurl.com/ILwhatshot

Readers:
Not much new for readers
Being advanced, added some things, but no new readers

Feedly:
add-on to Google Reader
added stuff on, different format to feeds
can tweet right from the reader

Firefox reader: just didn’t work out

Google Reader and Bloglines are the two big readers

Google Reader is becoming the more popular reader now
Notes feature–can share feed with others and a note who subscribes to your shared items
Email feature too
Trends feature: fun statistics, can see how much reading done on the mobile, “most obscure”=what you subscribe to and no one else does
Search your reader items–pretty cool, like searching your own little newspaper
Can also read off-line through Google Gears

Cool stuff now: Lifestreaming
Bringing it all together
Tumblr
can RSS the feed from Tublr, allows you to use any URL you own in addition to using a tumblr domain

friendfeed
made by same person who did Gmail (rock on!)
another lifestream application

RSS Tools
Feed Sidebar (Firefox extension: reader on the left side of your browser)
Libworm (database of library oriented feeds, blogs–so cool! can get the feed of your search)
Techmeme
YouTube (can RSS to feeds from YouTube; good to see how libraries are marketing themselves)
Twitter Search (can RSS the feed too–IL2008 is on the top of twitter search right now)
OpenCongress (track any federal legislation, congressmen, etc. through RSS)
JustiaDockets (can see federal filings, anytime a company is sued get through RSS–push it out to your clients)
Ebay (use a third party site to get RSS feed)
delicious (subscribe to tags, other users) follow tag “tools”
Google Blogs Search (can run your blog URL through it)

No RSS? Get a feed from a page
Page 2 RSS (use to get an RSS from any page–really any static page–rock on, only updates once a day)
Update Scanner (Firefox extension, allows you to keep up to date with any page, will scan for updates (you set the scanning settings) highlights new stuff–cool!)

Use RSS to let people in organization know that you are around

Staying Current
WWWhatsnew (keep up, but in Spanish–can get it translated)
Database RSS feeds for your search (I love these)

Know who your FLOs are (Friends of the Library): they are the best marketing for your library

Screengrab (Firefox extension–screencap only part of the screen that you want)

Missing Auctions (now at Invisible-Auctions.com–looks for all the misspellings of a word on ebay)

Note: This was a totally fun session. Great presenter and very funny! People videoing it and twittering it live!

Take Home Message:
RSS can be used for more than you think! Check out some of these cool tools that you can use in your work and for fun!

Making Movies: IL2008

Making Movies: Cameras, Lights, Action

by: Sean Robinson and Kaye Gregg

Anime studio 5: software to use

American public on average watch 28 hours of TV a week

Tools of the Trade:
Camera
Tripod
Microphone
Lights
Computer Software

Lowest entry point:
using camera on the video setting and large SD memory card (cool!)

Upping Production Value
Sony pd 170 $1600 (many manual settings)
They use Mac for editing (I don’t use Macs, PCs work too)
Final Cut Express ($155)
Anime 5 ($44)
Sound editing: Audacity (works well–love it, I use it for podcasting)
Fast track M-Audio ($100)
Make your own soundtrack

Lighting kits: scoop lights from Home Depot, etc.

Don’t make bad videos:
Make a video that is both informative and entertaining

Challenge: move idea to reality!

Devil is in the details
get idea, write and rewrite, scout location, secure location, know light sources, outside–shoot in morning or evening (light is better), be aware of ambient sounds, take shots with still camera, test your equipment

Finding talent: searching inside your organization, look for extroverts, give them a screen test

Be prepared! Write out script on large piece of paper and hold under the camera so they can read it

Score it!
Put music into your video, archive.org (public domain clips/video loops) or create your own if you are musical, expectation to have music with video
Layer sound: voice, soundtrack, special effects sound

Microphones: stationary mic, lapel mic, if moving around a lot you can use a boom mic, or put in sound after the filming in the editing process

Sound design: work seamlessly, you shouldn’t notice it, register subconsciously, create auditory clues

More tools:
comb, water to drink and makeup
A little makeup is good, too much is a crime
Costuming: clothing should be in harmony with the surroundings

Prep work should be done before the talent gets there: check lights, camera and audio

Lighting 101:
Overhead florescent lighting: horrible, makes people look angry and green
Try to control lighting
Back light: hits at the base of the neck, separates subject from background
Fill light: in from the side, filling out the shadows
Should use: Back light, fill light (soften the face), key light (makes sparkle in the eyes) (15 degrees from the camera, 45 degrees angle)

Editing
If it doesn’t advance the story, it needs to go (even if you love the shot)
Make the subjects look and sound as good as possible

How do you do the editing?
Plan for the edit
Make the person make a script from their idea
Storyboard your script (it will keep you on schedule)

Edit wisely:
Viewers are visually sophisticated and can spot a bad edit, rely on your instinct, smooth edits and give a pace to it. Always have an intro, middle and end/wrap-up

Time needed:
40 minutes of film shot= 2 minutes usable footage
1 minute of footage=4 hours of editing
Double how long you think it will take and round up to the next Friday

Making a video in the session–we actually filmed a video that will be used for IL2009 marketing! So cool

Take Home Message:
Making videos is hard work but rocks. Rock on librarians!

Twitter: IL2008

Twitter & How the “Twittest” Use it for Keeping Up
by: Michael Sauers, Christa Burns, Cindi Trainor, and Jezmynne Westcott

Michael Sauers and Christa Burns
Microblogging
Short, fast, easy, mobile
140 characters or less
follow friends, be followed, like IM, but asynchronous, no status
Need friends to have fun and “get it”
Easy to sign-up and start

Terminology
Post=tweet
Verb= tweeting
Methods: via the web, via client (Twhirl), via bookmarklet, via email, via SMS, Blog-to-witter (twitterfeed)
URLs are shortened to tinyurl

Twhirl: on your desktop, works for Twitter and friendfeed
TwitThis: bookmarklet the URL
Twitterfeed: can run through your RSS feed and it will show up in Twitter

Twitter commands
@username: reply
d username message: private, direct message
nudge username: nudge person
l: location information
follow username
leave username
block username (can’t read your topic)
invite phonenumber
#hashtag (tag)

Direct Messages
Sent directly to you, private instead of public

Add friends: follow button under the person icon on twitter

Follow your friends:
read your friends’ tweets via your twitter homepage, can subscribe via RSS, receive tweets via SMS

Uses:
Conferences
Reference Questions
News
Emergency Services
Weather
Presidential Campaigns, etc.

search.twitter.com : can search twitter (tag for Internet Librarian is IL2008)

Problems
Twitterference–so many tweets that you can’t make a phone call
No back-up, content is gone
considered too distracting
If you don’t participate, you won’t get anything out of it

7 Tips to a Good Twitter Experience
Follow others
@comment others
link to your stuff
don’t take non-responses personally
be patient
avoid addiction
use your name

Cindi Trainor, and Jezmynne Westcott

Twitter can be a learning tool

Making Connections
Sharing your stuff
Putting it all together
Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Twitter Questions:
How do you make connections?
can add people to your favorites

Tweetdeck: see all your tweets and replies in different frames and TwitScoop (tag cloud) to see the buzz, could also use twhirl

FriendFeed is a social aggregator
Aggregate all your social media in one place, enables conversation
Real time data, live updates for you

Flock
Browser made specifically for social media applications
(cool idea, but I don’t like the default skin, I need to customize it)

Take Home Message:
Twitter is great for community and you need community to make it work. But beware because it can be addictive and a great time sink.

Defining & Measuring Social Media Success: IL2008

by: Jeff Wisniewski, Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh

Many libraries have presence in social media, but struggling with assessing if it is worth the effort, what is the ROI?

Game Plan/Outline of the Session:
Why be social?
Developing a social media plan
Assessing social media success

Why be Social (Bad Reasons)
Because Oprah said we should
cause everyone is doing it
cause kids think it’s cool

Better Reasons:
Innovative ways to connect with users we may never see face to face
To encourage, promote, innovate, learn and adapt
Markets our services–people like to read reviews from people like themselves
Improve Customer Service
Discover and deliver what users want
Your Google page rank is influenced by it
People are anxious to interact with you online 85% of Americans using social media think companies should have an active presence in social media

Study of Facebook from the UK
Indicates that students use Facebook to connect and talk about academics, could use in teaching and learning

Developing a social media plan
1. Listen: ask yourself–is there a conversation about your library right now? If so, what is being said?
2. Prepare: Define a strategy, define goals (what exactly do you want to accomplish?), pick a platform or two, right platform depends on your goals Social Media at Sun Microsystems: How to Pick a Platform
3. Engage: Start blogging, etc., remember that social media is reciprocal, upload images to flickr, building community on Twitter, etc. just start getting out there
4. Measure: Becoming active in social media is the easy part, assessment is harder.

Measuring:
Need to know your ROI in order to justify using social media
You are not measuring: friendship, happiness, karma, enlightenment, etc.
You do need: quantitative and qualitative metrics

What are you measuring?
The Trinity Approach (Vinash Kaushik http://kaushik.net)
Behavior:
Quantitative: number of blog posts (Boyd’s Conversation Index: take number of posts divided by comments and trackbacks; result should be less than 1), number of facebook friends, views/visits
Have a tangible goal so you can measure it: ex higher satisfaction, fewer desk calls, etc.
Experience:
Listen, Engage, Converse, take action (cyclical in nature), be authentic in interactions, don’t sound all markety
Metric: take comments and break them down into stars (positive), scars (negative), or neutral and can produce a chart and compare how you are doing
Five things to get started:
1. monitor general search engine results–focus on Google because Google does social media results
2. monitor social media search engine results (like Technorati, del.icio.us, Twitter)
3. create alerts (use Google alerts, figure out how people get to your library, choose comprehensive results setting)
4. analytics: Google and Clicky Web Analytics (getclicky.com)
5. Assess nature and sentiment of the activity (deep commenting vs. superficial, users staying vs. bouncing quickly, repeat commenters vs. drive bys)

Take Home Message:
Social media creates a great opportunity for the library to engage more fully with people, but you need to remember to assess and measure the impact of your engagement in social media.

Keynote by danah boyd: IL2008

Keynote: Social Media & Networked Technologies: Research & Insights

by: danah boyd

Web2.0 is part of the hype but a lot of people don’t know what it is

Technology crowd: see it as a shift in technology and deployment “perpetual beta” users affect the cycle of technology creation, reshaping, user-generated content

Business crowd: web2.0 is about hope, came after the technology bubble burst, venture capitalist

Reshaped how everyday users interact with technology and what they use it for

Very topically driven, interest driven

Reshaping of what public spaces online look like, it is now about friends and your community, organized around being social= rise of social network sites

Social Network Sites Characteristics: 

Profile–create identity online, formally making your identity known in a particular context, expresses who you think you are to people in the community, you can recreate yourself online, “decorating” young people’s profile look like bedroom walls in chaos

Friends–have to publicly articulate who your friends are, it is awkward, the term friends mean different things to different people

Patterns of friending: 1. people connect with those close with (20-50 friends) 2. most have a couple hundred of friends 3. people who try to collect with as many people as possible (14year old boys, musicians, politicians) 

MySpace: makes you list best friends in order, so awkward and horrible, tricky to navigate, young people find tricks to deal with this, bands are the safest things to put in your top friends, have social rules

Comments/Wall–majority of content there is not that great–not much information exchanged, social grooming, public performance, keep relationships going 

Facebook: status updates, update what you are doing, peripheral awareness of what is going on, very similar to Twitter (microblogging)

 

Microblogging–use in many ways, use in businesses, etc. creates peripheral awareness in digital environment, 

Why are people spending so much time on these sites?

Using for social purposes, sharing information, flirting, etc. Very critical for young people–free time to socialize like the digital mall, area to socialize because kids are not allowed outside with decreased mobility of young people, fear, overstructuring of kids’ lives, lack of mobility because no public transit, etc. makes digital social spaces important 

Must have presence on social network sites in order to exist 

Continuum of use–use all the time or post artifacts if you are able to meet with your friends often

 

Social Network Sites are digital social, public spaces properties:

1. Persistence–what you say sticks around, every ephemeral acts are now persistence, traces are now permanent 

2. Replicability–can copy and paste information, take from one context to another, don’t know the copy versus original, if it has been modified, young people bully each other through this

3. Scalability–average blog is read by 6 people, Internet has scalability issues–potential to reach millions but reality of reaching no one, attention-driven media

4. Searchability–you are not searchable when you are walking around physically, but online you become searchable often by those you don’t want, most deadly by teachers, bosses, etc. how do you become not searchable? change characteristics of profile

Invisible Audiences–audiences are invisible, an unknown online, you don’t have a sense of who is seeing it, you don’t know who will get there eventually, “imagined audience” 

Collapsed Contexts–we are used to distinct contexts defined by space, example weddings are very scripted events, online no walls–can be awkward

Public=Private–convergence, try to have control over space online, now about control, marking who can see things, public is completely out of control

What does this mean?

Radically change through information ecology

Same kind of structures in information technologies being created 

Examples: tagging in del.icio.us, everyone organizes information now in different ways 

Young people contribute to creation of knowledge ex. Wikipedia (most transparent creation of knowledge ever created), and questions of who has voice, authenticity, etc., but we are not teaching people about wikipedia and creation of knowledge, media literacy 

Breakdown of traditional authorship and ownership, ex. mashups, remixes, etc. (fan videos, fan fiction) need to harness this kind of passion 

Traditional ways of information organization and access can be modernized, happening in a broader sense 

This is an attention economy, what comes up is what gets the most attention not what is necessarily best, now we have to deal with it

Need to understand what is going on and how to use it

Lawrence Lessig talking about changes:

Social Norms

Market

Architecture of technologies

Law–conservative 

Intervention:

Net Neutrality–all bits are created equal, do you have the equal right to look at every page, how do you deal with this? need to figure out a way to protect net neutrality, need it for equal playing field

DRM–all about control of information, (defectivebydesign.org), if information is locked down you can’t consume, produce and play with content, this is about sharing and creating culture, DRM can kill off ability to engage with texts, need to balance original efforts of copyright with rights of consumer

Fair Use–need to figure it out in the media world, have publishers saying you can’t take more than 10 words, fair use is only a defense, form of terror online (note: check out chillingeffects)

Always positive and negatives 

Mobile is going to change everything, web2.0 will come into the mobile world, going to expand, cluster effects are key: can’t talk to each other if on different carriers, need to have same standard to get cluster effects, no standards in mobile space yet

(de)locatability–regardless of where you are in physical world you can bring your friends through the mobile world, also you can take what you are doing in the physical space into the online world ex. GPS uses in mobile phones 

Technology radically reshaping public as we know it, take properties in play and contend with them and how we want to shape information, technology and how people are interacting 

Take Home Message: 

Technology is here to stay, we must determine what we are going to do and how we are going to interact with everyone and educate them.

IL2008 Day 2 Wrap-up

Another day done at IL 2008. Here are a few final thoughts for the day:

Best Presentation of the Day: 2.0 Learning and 1.8 Users–fabulous presentation, great LOL cats images, wonderful energy! This presentation was so energizing and makes you want to get out there and teach more! The presenters were so engaging and just lovely to hear speaking about what they are obviously passionate about.

Most Improved: Wireless only dropped 3 times during a presentation today in the DeAnza room. Way to go with progress, but still so ironic to have wifi problems at Internet Librarian.

Meta Take Home Message for the Day:
Make online resources for your patrons (we need to be where they are) and figure out what application is best for each task. (Not everything needs to be in Flash!) And remember to market your resources! Oh, and always, always, always make your resources accessible!

Blending Technologies for Library Promotion & Instruction: IL2008

Blending Technologies for Library Promotion & Instruction

by May Chang, Margot Hanson, and Kevin Roddy

May Chang:
Video project started because students said they loved working at the library
All of this was volunteer, unpaid
Didn’t want a talking head, students are the best to show on the video
Story-based, brainstormed, storyboarded
Always takes longer than you think to make
Project took 4 months to do 5 minutes video

Hardware used:
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1000 camera

Applications:
Vegas Movie Studio
Camstasia Studio
SnagIt

Checklist:
Talent Release Form
Location
Camera-friendly clothing
Interview questions
Shooting schedule–hard to coordinate schedules
Script–don’t tell everything, don’t make it long

Assessing Information Literacy Online:
by: Margot Hanson & Kevin Roddy

IL (information literacy) tutorial-creation

Tutorial Includes:
Tutorial
Research Journal–guide to research process
IM chat help
Email access to librarians adn instructors
videos
links to other interactive content

Incorporates local interests, Hawaii research because indexing terms are not good for Hawaii research in some databases

Tutorial at www.hawaii.edu/lilo

Tutorial follows IL framework, starts simple and defines IL, builds from there

Assessment Challenges:
WASC–drives accreditation
Faculty Buy-in–show tests (ETS iSkills test, etc), standards, etc.
Analysis of data–data from student journals, give response rate to instructors, all about improvement

Take Home Message:
Involving students in video creation is the best way to get engagement and buy-in from students. You don’t need expensive equipment, you just need to be willing to learn and find people who are passionate about teaching and tech.

Streaming Media & Re-Tooling Library Services for Online Learners: IL2008

by Dale David, Anthony Bernier, Barbara Stillwell and Robin Lockerby

First part of the presentation: Barbara Stillwell and Robin Lockerby from National University Library

Because of increase in online education they created:
Centralized services
Added Multimedia Department

New Collaborative Spaces:
Email, IM service didn’t work for them, also VoIP

Library Instruction to Multimedia
Already had in-class instruction, added VoIP, recorded VoIP sessions so students could use them as National University has 1 month intensive classes

What’s next: want to increase quality of audio/video, increase production quality
What’s it great for: outreach, reaching more students

National University’s Multimedia Department
has graphic designer, multimedia designer and one librarian (QA librarian)
learned that it takes much longer to create products than most think, because of learning curve
Uses Adobe flash–takes a long time
Always see something more that could be done after you create a new module
Sometimes, it is better to have smaller videos, serialize information so the videos aren’t super-long

Be choosy about what format you use, not one format is the best for all uses (I would add, also always ask about accessibility before starting to use a new product. There is no point making something that isn’t accessible, IMHO)

SWOT:
Strength: professional design team (who can actually afford this, though?)
Weakness: professional design team has limited library exposure, different jargon
Opportunities: refining production workflows–have a sytle guide
Threats: conflicting goals and objectives

Take Home Message:
Online instruction through tutorials/modules are great, especially if you have a dedicated design team. But definitely remember that simpler is better if you are like most who don’t have a design team.

Streaming Media nad Distance Education: The SJSU SLIS Model
by: Dale David and Anthony Bernier from SJSU’s SLIS

Colloquial Series (extra-curricular) aka CS
Produced through a team
began in fall 2006
between 40-60minutes
available in many different accessible formats

Vision of CS
Broaden exposure to LIS world and community, outreach and marketing
Expose others to the cutting edge technology
Offers opportunity for continuing education

Speakers
Filmed on-campus at SJ and at Fullerton
Include: faculty presenting research, part-time faculty, librarians, etc.

Marketing
All is online, including listserv
Also through SJSU website

Audience
Can come in if you are in the area
Get undergrads come to the presentation
Usually between 12-25 people in physical audience
Online audience is quite large: around 275 unique hits on presentations

Technology used:
Digital Camera and mic set-up
Record in classroom on campus

Video editing
Incorporate any PowerPoint slides used, screencaps of websites go to during the presentation

Encoding
Disseminate in different formats on the web
Including closed captioning (using SMILE)
Using RealPlayer because it was the legacy format
Offered in podcast, RSS feed, iTunes, Blip.tv (no time limits unlike YouTube)

Have an archive–everything is indexed, it is searchable, very nice

Take Home Message:
Great idea to have a colloquial series and even better idea to encode into many different formats. Many props for also making these accessible. I am so checking these out.

2.0 Learning & 1.8 Users: Bridging the Gap: IL2008

2.0 Learning and 1.8 Users

by Rudy Leon, and Colleen Harris

Google generation aka Digital Generation

Myths about the Google Generation:
Skilled online searchers
Ease with new gadgets
Always connected
Effective multi-taskers
Require constant stimulation
Must be entertained
Learn by doing

Mythbusting
The do use the stuff, but not generating content, don’t understand the backend of the technology
Don’t have a mental map of the technology, little transferable skills, ramifications for new services, they don’t fit into student’s understandings of what they already know
We need to build the map that allows the students to transfer skills
We can’t build services and resources built on the myths

Digital Divide
Still very real
only about 62% of US homes have a computer in the home
99% of US schools have computers and Internet, but it varies widely in hardware and access
Differential training and use of the technology, very different skill sets

Fault lines:
Number 1 line is still race: 65% white, 45% African American, 30% Latino households have computers
Also fault line via class

Persistent effects:
Students get their information and do groupwork online, students do not get training in universities and therefore self-select out of certain majors that use a lot of technology, creates a divide in education

Challenges:
Students put a lot of weight on what their faculty say

Challenges: Faculty
What Faculty Know or Don’t: learn how to do research from their instructors through Ph.d, have informal networks
Expect students to figure it out on their own, but students need context and help
Equipment: need to think of technology as part of a skill set
Faculty not highly trained in teaching: learn to teach through sitting through classes, how can we help professors with their teaching?

Think of technology as Education Technology and do training to show how to use technology to make the teaching better. How do you integrate technology into teaching? Have library step in and help with the training.

Getting faculty on Board:
Owning our own expertise–help faculty use the content effectively, because hey, librarians rock! We need to own our librarianship.
Competitive processes for course development–give faculty stipends and workshops
Make connections–get out there and network and make connections, “let’s have coffee,” need to have relationships in order to then get people to use the library
Classroom instruction–have faculty attend the session with their students, the faculty will learn stuff too
Leveraging reaccreditation process–include technology outcomes as part of this process

Campus IT
Scarce resources–go if something is not working
IT can’t implement everything–librarians have to do it
Lots of open source software–free, but requires a lot of time to implement and maintain, so consider what you do
What is the model for teaching and training–librarians are great and are a link among students, faculty and technology

Learning Spaces
Library is a safe learning space–students can fail without consequence of grades
How to strategies for engaging students/faculty
Workshops–great to have face to face contact
Making equipment available–can check out laptops, cameras, etc. from the library
Actionable assignments–use technology in an assignment, eg. make a documentary, photojournalism, etc.
Partnerships–again, network!

Moving Forward–Learning Spaces
Libraries are a unique spaces on campus, safe learning spaces
Technology is fun and libraries are for learning, technology should help or enable learning
Critical thinking and metal maps–learning should be fun and technology should support learning

Building the Bridge
Build the workshops that help build skills
Gadgets support learning
We are the adults and students need to have a voice, but what they want is not always what they need, we don’t need to entertain the students 24/7
Have space and structure to play
Be skeptical about what the media says about the Digital Generation

Great presentation, love the LOL cats photos, wonderful energy!

Take Home Message: It’s all about community. Technology supports learning and is the means to the end, which is having faculty and students understand how technology helps.