Building Web 2.0 Native Library Services
Casey Bisson, Software developer & information technologist, Plymouth State University
This session looks at the World Wide Web as a "disruptive technology", and how the Web affects libraries and our users. How can libraries catch up to user expectations of our online services?
My comments are in parentheses
Libraries are much larger than our books or our OPACs, and all library services are subject to the same pressures.
Students will look for "Sociology of education"; librarians will look for "educational sociology"
Challenges to our catalogs: usability: findability: remixability: These are insufficient for our users and what they are used to outside of library systems.
The Internet is not what we think it is: Web 2.0 is made of people
Harvard Psychology Research: Couples tended to learn what each other could remember; so a memory score of a couple together was far higher than any individual alone.
Web has collective memory --> What is the web becoming despite our fears and intentions?
The web was developed as the realm of academics and then business came along until the dot com bust and many of them left the web but then the web had become something other than what we had predicted.
The individual will drive the purpose of the transportation system - the individual will drive the purpose of the web: Services developed are driven by the individual not the coroprate interests.
Where is the Web Now?
Economics of plenty - Linux is an example of this and we all use it daily. It is the dominant system that many of the websites we use.
Over 3/4 of Americans have regular access to the Internet and over half of them are using it on any given day (older figures)
IBM saves a $900,000,000 annually because they've embraced open source products such as Apache & Linux.
The web has made such collaboration & innovation possible.
Lessons From Web 2.0
Leading demographic of those buying music online - or embracing iTunes store = Adults over 35: What happens when these users are the leading people making budget decisions at the local level?
1. We get one chance to prove that we're not stupid.
The services we have are worth using - we only get one chance to prove this.
Users searching for "Sociology of education" will get "Facilitating watershed management" as the fourth result! - The experience needs to be improved - we need to get better results and better context! User interface looks brilliant, but the quality of information we received is not that useful.
The Subject "Educational sociology" is there - now the user can see it and find it easily. There is context.
2. People have questions
Mixes catalog content with website content - our course guides now appear right at the top.
Results: A guide to research in Lamson Library: Course specific research guides: databases: books and more: reference material: etc - followed by catalog (book) results.
The moment somebody asks a question is the time they need the answer - we need to get better at closing the gap between question and answers.
3. Links are Citations
The web has taught us that the URL is the main way to cite our works: Link to our citations - both searches and particular resources.
4. We are not the Center of the Information Universe
People will use information from a variety of sources and they will send it off in a variety of ways. If a browser allows them to email an item or copy/paste items out - Users will do this. YouTube example: Easy Embed Code.
What library will be the first to use an embed code with the book jacket, and a link back to the catalog?
5. Valid, clean, semantic markup is essential
We need to build services that work well - not just for us and display on screen as we want them - If we take away the CSS it still has semantic meaning. If we use the features of XHTML properly to identify - it's easy for users to read and easy for machines to read.
6. Sites that allow comments value their users
Best lesson of Web 2.0 is that our users are smarter than us. These comments add value to the photos and help us know WHERE and WHAT these items are about - something no archivist or librarian in the world could tell us.
(Could we put our online photos into a 'blog' type feature? And if so, allow comments from community members to label those in the photos?)
We didn't have to do anything special to allow this information to be added - simply a comment system.
7. Your website is not a marketing tool... it's a service point.
Our customers come to our website for knowledge, information, and service not to be marketed too - we need to give them what they are looking for.
What is Scriblio?
WordPress is the basis for Scriblio - database has already been set up, it's on a server, and we know that it works. From here it's fifteen minutes to making your library better.
WordPress is a five minute install (mostly because it may take five minutes to upload files)
WordPress is the basis of Scriblio - It is now used by 2 million users world-wide - many of those users are contributing back to WordPress. If we use something unique to libraries we are duplicating many efforts along those scores.
Install Scriblio: a set of plugins for WordPress: Helps us to represent library catalog - and in many cases the entire library website.
Activate iSuite: Activate Scriblio: All of the software components have been activated in 3 minutes
Let's bring some data in - Import tab: Catalog importer - accepts marc files. Default importer for Scriblio
Second Import tab: III importer - Imports records from III ILS: most difficult questions is what bib number range do you want to use? You don't have to export these records first, it's taking information directly from the ILS using features that are available in nearly all III catalogs.
SIDENOTE: Image Archive - Doesn't have a big digital collection tool behind it using FLICKR to catalog and upload these records
We actually Harvested them and now we're going to publish that harvest.
Scriblio Options are where we will set names and we also need to set Permalink options: domainname.net/read/idnumber
RSS feeds out of this catalog
Less than ten minutes to do all of these steps.
FrontEnd: Blog Posts & Pages
Browse Link - almost our catalog - We need our searching facets
Presentation Tab: Widgets: Drop in a Search Tool & Search Editor
We can narrow by subject - let's look for fiction - history. It will continue to give other options
Changed theme: Scriblio theme - a demo theme
Do you have eleven and a half minutes to build a library that is more searchable?
300,000 items in this particular catalog; Familiarity with Cron (??) should be able to schedule updates. Description and reviews as well as covers are coming directly from Amazon's API
http://www.scriblio.net/
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