Friday, May 14, 2010
Sachin Kamdar, co-founder of parse.ly, a personalized recommendation service based in Philadelphia. NetFlix, Pandora, and many many other sites make personalized recommendations based on prior purchases or registered interests, user-inputted content, or comparisons with the purchase histories of other users. Parse.ly licenses a recommendation engine to publishers so they can introduce recommendations on their own sites through widgets and API access to their technology. The engine adds recommendations to the website based on user preferences and also offers extended options such as email newsletters.
NFAIS bloggin part V: search technologies p.III
Mike Gorrell, CIO of EBSCO publishing, talking about EBSCO Delivery Service "the Complete Discovery Solution". To EBSCO, discovery means fast, simple access to everything- electronic and print- in the library through a single search box.
In searching, the user experience is predicated on the quality of the content and the ease of discovery- with discovery service, all of the EBSCO subscriptions and databases become available through the discovery service along with the library holdings. The library can download it's catalog to the server that manages its discovery instance and update it frequently to provide near-real-time availability data on its holdings. The service can also add resources that are NOT compliant with federated services- such as Encyclopedia Britannica.
In searching, the user experience is predicated on the quality of the content and the ease of discovery- with discovery service, all of the EBSCO subscriptions and databases become available through the discovery service along with the library holdings. The library can download it's catalog to the server that manages its discovery instance and update it frequently to provide near-real-time availability data on its holdings. The service can also add resources that are NOT compliant with federated services- such as Encyclopedia Britannica.
NFAIS bloggin part IV: Search Technologies part II
Peter Noerr, CTO of MuseGlobal- discussing federated search. Noerr sees semantic search as an eventual solution to many problems, but also thinks it is still on the distant horizon despite what many of its most enthusiastic advocates say. Federated search is a way of patching the issues in the interim- it doesn't index the world, it doesn't build centralized indexes and databases. However, it does enable users to submit single queries to multiple sources of data, on demand, in real time, and is able to interpret and communicate in multiple formats and languages- and it also incorporates the 'long tail' content of some of the incredibly niche academic databases. Federated search solutions can connect to both enterprise-specific, subscription, and open-web sources. However, while federated search has been around for more than a decade, and has a good number of specialized vendors, AND most specialized sources of data are compliant- it's still cumbersome to use, difficult to manage and maintain, and the vast majority of libraries don't use it! The value question is still very much up in the air, and depends to a great extent on what resources are available to the institution to maintain the search tool and to provide expensive subscription sources.
NFAIS blogging part III: Current Search Technologies
Chris Pooley, CEO of Intellidimension, presenting now. His company deals with semantic searching technology. What is semantic searching? Incorporating searcher intent and contextual meaning into the generation of search results- in general, a better incorporation of the meaning of the term, rather than its resemblance and recurrence solely as strings of characters. Little s semantics- points to search that uses powerful algorithms, human indexes, thesauri in the way that Wolfram|Alpha has pioneered. Big S semantic searching refers to semantic web open standards like RDF, OWL, and SPARQL- where the semantics are incorporated into the data and that data can be interpreted by computers and browsers, in a more automated, embedded way. They can be complementary approaches- not mutually exclusive and both have the same goal: improving search results for end-users. The more intelligence we put in the data itself, the less work the search algorithm needs to do. Pooley sees Facebook's new OpenGraph protocol as being a huge breakthrough for the semantic web-in part because it is based on RDF and it only requires a few additional lines of code to be able to harvest recommendations that are personalized, local, and relevant.
NAIS Blogging, part II
Joseph Lucia, a librarian at Villanova University is up next.
As librarians- "We worship at the church of OPAC but we slum at the Google bar and grill." At Villanova- even though they have driven down the amount of resources dedicated to print resources to about as low as they think it can do (20% of acquisitions), they are increasingly feeling that their electronic collections are becoming vestigial. However the balance is that students are increasingly overwhelmed by too much information- library expertise and deployment is valuable in a different context than it was in the past:
Librarians understand the structure and typology of information resoures as they relate to the nature and value of authority, and the processes and channels of vetting and making information authoritative in a format that furthers learning. To access our resources, students and users need to move from the open spaces they are used to to bounded or closed spaces that libraries control. Conversely, to reach users more effectively, we need to push our information out into open spaces. Our initiatives will be in erasing some of our current silos and improving the trails that we mark to enable discovery. At Villanova, they developed VuFind to help with these needs- trying to move their traditional catalog to a more web-native "discovery" platform which would be based on open-source tools that were able to manipulate their MARC data in a appealing, interactive platform.
In the future, Villanova would like to create more connections with social network and to create new forms of dynamic representation of information networks- bringing together the 'subscription' resources that are maintained by the library and universal information environment of the open internet. Lucia also noted that Google has recently accepted the concept of faceting search results- one which libraries and their software vendors have supported for year.
As librarians- "We worship at the church of OPAC but we slum at the Google bar and grill." At Villanova- even though they have driven down the amount of resources dedicated to print resources to about as low as they think it can do (20% of acquisitions), they are increasingly feeling that their electronic collections are becoming vestigial. However the balance is that students are increasingly overwhelmed by too much information- library expertise and deployment is valuable in a different context than it was in the past:
Librarians understand the structure and typology of information resoures as they relate to the nature and value of authority, and the processes and channels of vetting and making information authoritative in a format that furthers learning. To access our resources, students and users need to move from the open spaces they are used to to bounded or closed spaces that libraries control. Conversely, to reach users more effectively, we need to push our information out into open spaces. Our initiatives will be in erasing some of our current silos and improving the trails that we mark to enable discovery. At Villanova, they developed VuFind to help with these needs- trying to move their traditional catalog to a more web-native "discovery" platform which would be based on open-source tools that were able to manipulate their MARC data in a appealing, interactive platform.
In the future, Villanova would like to create more connections with social network and to create new forms of dynamic representation of information networks- bringing together the 'subscription' resources that are maintained by the library and universal information environment of the open internet. Lucia also noted that Google has recently accepted the concept of faceting search results- one which libraries and their software vendors have supported for year.
Blogging NAIS: Improving the User Search Experience
Division of Libraries staff attended a recent workshop in Philadelphia hosted by Lyrasis and NFAIS, the National Federation of Advanced Information Services. The workshop looked at how publishers and librarians can leverage technology to improve their users' search experience, and how to design their services to optimize discovery and usability.
The first presentation was by Cody Hanson, technology librarian at U. of Minnesota, who discussed a recent project on Discoverability, an effort to identify trends in user discovery behavior which would enable the school to support new technology initiatives.
The project's main question was "how can we make relevant resources more visible and easy to find?". Their final report can be read in full here, but Cody was kind enough to break down the major findings for the attendees. A literature review and other research on how their own users interacted with the school's online services outlined the main current discovery trends that needed to be placed at the forefront of institutional strategy:
- Users are discovering relevant information outside of traditional library systems- they're not starting with library resources and the traditional library catalog. The recent Ithaka study also identified this as the most significant issues facing research and academic libraries.
- Users expect discovery and delivery to coincide- it's no longer sufficient to just be told by a library service that a resource exists- people expect that when they find what they want, they have what they want
- Discovery increasingly happens through recommending- going beyond traditional book reviews and citations, users are now increasingly looking to recommendations gathered through social networking, link sharing, and reviews generated through algorithms connecting purchases with similiar purchases by others
- Our users increasingly rely on "nontraditional information objects": that is to say, youtube videos, social network conversations, wikis and other ephemeral and transitional artifacts.
- User of portable internet-capable devices is expanding.
More discussion of this and other presentations below the fold...
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Going Portable With NetLibrary
I attended an OCLC presentation at the PLA Conference, with Michael Gorrell (mdg@ebscohost.com) CIO of EBSCO Publishing- remember, EBSCO and OCLC recently announced a deal to sell its NetLibrary divisioin and EBSCO will be taking it over incrementally over the next several months. I wonder what the presentation as it was originally envisioned was like!
Mike Gorrell first talked about the new acquisition:
this will allow the incorporation of ebooks into the EBSCO platform and further enhance the development of EBSCO's Content/PDF viewer. Since Mike admits that "EBSCO doesn't know books" they will be soliciting a lot of input from librarians on how to go forward.
The new PDF viewer will be added to the EBSCO platform next week- the content viewer will enhance access to journals by providing more content in the .pdf platform, which allows better access to images and illustrations, with image handling, zooming, and mapping abilites. It will also be possible to switch between the html and pdf versions of the documents. EBSCO are interested in exploring connecting the NetLibrary content with its NoveList platform, and with further leveraging its content to mobile devices and e-readers. Other than purchasing an adobe license, there's not really any technology hurdle for the library. It's then possible for users to download a pdf-type version of a book to their PC, or, in many cases, a device.
An alternative download manager will be released soon- a "light" version of the Media Center, which is a big install that some low-bandwidth users have trouble with. The new version will have fewer features and a different architecture.
Mike Gorrell first talked about the new acquisition:
this will allow the incorporation of ebooks into the EBSCO platform and further enhance the development of EBSCO's Content/PDF viewer. Since Mike admits that "EBSCO doesn't know books" they will be soliciting a lot of input from librarians on how to go forward.
The new PDF viewer will be added to the EBSCO platform next week- the content viewer will enhance access to journals by providing more content in the .pdf platform, which allows better access to images and illustrations, with image handling, zooming, and mapping abilites. It will also be possible to switch between the html and pdf versions of the documents. EBSCO are interested in exploring connecting the NetLibrary content with its NoveList platform, and with further leveraging its content to mobile devices and e-readers. Other than purchasing an adobe license, there's not really any technology hurdle for the library. It's then possible for users to download a pdf-type version of a book to their PC, or, in many cases, a device.
An alternative download manager will be released soon- a "light" version of the Media Center, which is a big install that some low-bandwidth users have trouble with. The new version will have fewer features and a different architecture.
Monday, March 15, 2010
New Staff Training Modules
Just added to the Consortium site, a SirsiDynix-created tutorial that provides a good basic introduction to WorkFlows "look and feel"- suitable for new staff and anyone who needs a refresher: Click here to open the tutorial in a new window.
Additional self-paced tutorials are available on the consortium site's Training Page
Additional self-paced tutorials are available on the consortium site's Training Page
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Conference Keynote
David Lee King is a "mover and shaker" in the library world who has made the Topeka library a very innovative and creative presence on the library internet. He did a nice keynote at the SirsiDynix customer conference this morning. Here's a quick recap:
David King of the Topeka public library is keynoting COSUGI on "Making the Digital Experience Sing!"
Today, there's an expectation of good customer service and consumer choice is ubiquitous (in America, perhaps). What is differentiating organizations now is customer experience. Experience is a set of services and activities that surround a purchase or other interaction with a product. American Girl stores are an example of a compelling customer experience where the purchase is only one facet of the consumer's interaction with the brand or service. Harley Davidson cited as another experience where the initial purchase is only the beginning of the consumer's relationship with the brand and other products or services that it might offer.
How to design a digital experience? DLK offers three paths:
Structural: creating a better expereience by improving ease of use of a website. Allows customers to focus on their own goals rather than figuring out how to interact with the website
Jessie James Garrett: Elements of User Experience a good intro to the topic. Charts how to create a user experience from the abstract to the concrete, with focuses on both business and customer needs. David Armano's approach to creating experiences is a more marketing oriented approach, from broad (uncover) through definition of what the experience should be, to immersion (designers using the service in all its aspects) before design. 37signals.com also a good (free) resource on the topic that offers simplified guidance- such as "writing a story" about what you want the experience to look like.
At Topeka, there is a current redesign plan that involves a LOT of planning and focus groups. DLK is meeting with different groups within the library organization to ask what their desired features would be, will meet with consumers later- with a focus on ease-of-use. Want the website to be "as easy to use as a light switch"- a service that requires almost no insight or knowledge to use, but immediately gives the desired result.
The second path: the Community Path is a way of seeking input in a relatively informal way from users, and will harvest a tremendous amount of useful input. In the digital context, this can be emulated via blog commenting, offering easy feedback, review, and integrations to various third party and social media where conversations can easily happen. Consumers should be able to connect with the library AND each other. Libraries can use "content enablers" such as open questions posed in various media to kick off a conversation and solicit a relationship with patrons, using web tools and website features.
Tools lead to participation- without participation there is not a community. Offer services to enable users to participate and encourage them to do so- and follow up on the input that they do have. Users and consumers also want to feel like they are an active part in developing the institutional story. Topeka library uses twitter among other services to extend its reach into the community- telling stories about what is going on at the library as well as answering questions about library services and also questions in general where library input is appropriate.
Sportsclips is a barbershop for men that creates a user experience focused on watching sports while getting a haircut. Webkins is a company where the initial purchase, which is not a huge amount of money, is a portal into a brand extension that comes into the home through a feature-rich online presence.
What do Webkins, Harley-Davidson, and Starbucks have in common? Focusing on the staging experience to extend the brand into the home and the consumer's everyday life. The "post-show" is where most of the activity happens. In libraries, the post-show can be an ongoing book discussion group that occurs online, for instance with a "big-read" program. When people go online they don't necessarily want to interact with information, they want to interact with people with a confluence of interests that are indicated by the meaning of the purchase.
Customer Journey Mapping: people who buy a car don't usually start out at the showroom. First there's an indication that a car needs to be purchased! CJM investigates where the "touchpoints" are between a customer and product or service and how to make those interactions work in the customer's best interest and with the best most compelling experience.
In a catalog search, the example could be like this:
Libraries can do a variety of simple customizations to help with the user experience, and can look for ways to "improve the ordinary" (the redesign of WD-40 is an example). For websites, figure out what the "ordinary" and the touchpoints are, and look at them with fresh eyes- most of us know how to work the systems and platforms- and how to work around the limitations. Because we've incorporated them into our daily routines we no longer see how frustrating some of these features are to use. Library users are having digital experiences with Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook and other services that are far more friendly than a typical catalog search.
Connecting the customer to the full scope of library services AND to other customers. The Work/Play/Experience blog is a useful source for information and ideas in how to create an Experience "Stage" online- and with conversations online becoming a pre-eminent tool in marketing, libraries need to learn the new language of online connection and conversation. Having a mediocre or at least adequate web presence is going to be increasingly unsatisfactory to the emerging generation.
David King of the Topeka public library is keynoting COSUGI on "Making the Digital Experience Sing!"
Today, there's an expectation of good customer service and consumer choice is ubiquitous (in America, perhaps). What is differentiating organizations now is customer experience. Experience is a set of services and activities that surround a purchase or other interaction with a product. American Girl stores are an example of a compelling customer experience where the purchase is only one facet of the consumer's interaction with the brand or service. Harley Davidson cited as another experience where the initial purchase is only the beginning of the consumer's relationship with the brand and other products or services that it might offer.
How to design a digital experience? DLK offers three paths:
Structural: creating a better expereience by improving ease of use of a website. Allows customers to focus on their own goals rather than figuring out how to interact with the website
Jessie James Garrett: Elements of User Experience a good intro to the topic. Charts how to create a user experience from the abstract to the concrete, with focuses on both business and customer needs. David Armano's approach to creating experiences is a more marketing oriented approach, from broad (uncover) through definition of what the experience should be, to immersion (designers using the service in all its aspects) before design. 37signals.com also a good (free) resource on the topic that offers simplified guidance- such as "writing a story" about what you want the experience to look like.
At Topeka, there is a current redesign plan that involves a LOT of planning and focus groups. DLK is meeting with different groups within the library organization to ask what their desired features would be, will meet with consumers later- with a focus on ease-of-use. Want the website to be "as easy to use as a light switch"- a service that requires almost no insight or knowledge to use, but immediately gives the desired result.
The second path: the Community Path is a way of seeking input in a relatively informal way from users, and will harvest a tremendous amount of useful input. In the digital context, this can be emulated via blog commenting, offering easy feedback, review, and integrations to various third party and social media where conversations can easily happen. Consumers should be able to connect with the library AND each other. Libraries can use "content enablers" such as open questions posed in various media to kick off a conversation and solicit a relationship with patrons, using web tools and website features.
Tools lead to participation- without participation there is not a community. Offer services to enable users to participate and encourage them to do so- and follow up on the input that they do have. Users and consumers also want to feel like they are an active part in developing the institutional story. Topeka library uses twitter among other services to extend its reach into the community- telling stories about what is going on at the library as well as answering questions about library services and also questions in general where library input is appropriate.
Sportsclips is a barbershop for men that creates a user experience focused on watching sports while getting a haircut. Webkins is a company where the initial purchase, which is not a huge amount of money, is a portal into a brand extension that comes into the home through a feature-rich online presence.
What do Webkins, Harley-Davidson, and Starbucks have in common? Focusing on the staging experience to extend the brand into the home and the consumer's everyday life. The "post-show" is where most of the activity happens. In libraries, the post-show can be an ongoing book discussion group that occurs online, for instance with a "big-read" program. When people go online they don't necessarily want to interact with information, they want to interact with people with a confluence of interests that are indicated by the meaning of the purchase.
Customer Journey Mapping: people who buy a car don't usually start out at the showroom. First there's an indication that a car needs to be purchased! CJM investigates where the "touchpoints" are between a customer and product or service and how to make those interactions work in the customer's best interest and with the best most compelling experience.
In a catalog search, the example could be like this:
- Where is the customer?
- What platform are they using?
- Where can they find the desired service on your online presence
- Do the elements that you present to them make sense, or are they explained adequately?
Libraries can do a variety of simple customizations to help with the user experience, and can look for ways to "improve the ordinary" (the redesign of WD-40 is an example). For websites, figure out what the "ordinary" and the touchpoints are, and look at them with fresh eyes- most of us know how to work the systems and platforms- and how to work around the limitations. Because we've incorporated them into our daily routines we no longer see how frustrating some of these features are to use. Library users are having digital experiences with Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook and other services that are far more friendly than a typical catalog search.
Connecting the customer to the full scope of library services AND to other customers. The Work/Play/Experience blog is a useful source for information and ideas in how to create an Experience "Stage" online- and with conversations online becoming a pre-eminent tool in marketing, libraries need to learn the new language of online connection and conversation. Having a mediocre or at least adequate web presence is going to be increasingly unsatisfactory to the emerging generation.
SirsiDynix StaffWeb
I have been at a training with SirsiDynix for the past week which allowed me to attend the first day of the annual SirsiDynix customer conference. One of the most interesting sessions was a presentation of SD's StaffWeb client- which is a web-based circulation, cataloging, and user registration interface (i.e. does not require installation as a client) which offers a pared-down set of functions which can be very easily configured to meet local needs. StaffWeb was initially created as a module for school libraries, where most staff do not need the full range of wizards and functions, and where the IT environment makes it easier to offer a web-based interface rather than installing something.
Here are the notes I made on the presentation:
Staff Web is a webbased client that allows circ, catalogin, reports and admin- offers streamlined, easy, short learning curve ideal for K12 libraries but with 3.3 it was opened up for all library types
Policy setup is done through the Symphony client by a system administrator, so someone in the organization needs a java workflows client- there's a separate tab for StaffWeb configuraiton in the User Access policies where the selections for StaffWeb functions can be checked or unchecked for access. In the screenshot it looks super-easy to configure.
The user environment is very simple and clean, with basic tabs and few selections. It would probably be entirely suitable for most circ staff in larger public libraries. The screenshot on display had only circulation and reports available, but an administration tab is available amongst others..
Adminsitration of staffweb allows customization of preferences for the circ station, the receipt printers, and also a template builder for simplified cataloging templates (see below). Admin setup can change defaults for lookups as well as the overall appearance and color scheme of the interface; miscellaneous configuration defaults for the Staffweb client are also available for customization in a more simplified interface.Preference files can be configured for either the user level, the station library level, or the system level.
Q: Can it support multiple schools/ districts each with different configurations and branding?
Looks like yes, using the station library preference configuration.
Circulation functioins available include the standards- checkout/in; user/item searches; display user; item status; placing holds. User information is configured the same way, and adding a new user looks relatively intuitive. Fields are available that allow a level of detail that is suitable for public library user records.
Ability to search user by typing last name into the user ID field is a nice feature- I wonder if this coujld be incorporated into Symphony in the future? It makes a lot of sense as a nice shortcut.
Cataloging options are sufficient for a lot of uses- especially with the ability to create and modify cataloging templates in addition to the delivered templates.
Report groups that are available: circulation, cataloging, user, and inventory. Mostly lists, counts, and labels (other than the inventory group). In user reports, for instance, there are 4 lists that are available- and the number of options are very limited (in a good way!) without multiple tabs- at least in the report that was on the screenshot. Output can be configured for html, csv or xml output in the basic options, which is a nice feature. It looks like it runs a good variety of browsers, and does require Adobe flash.
Here are the notes I made on the presentation:
Staff Web is a webbased client that allows circ, catalogin, reports and admin- offers streamlined, easy, short learning curve ideal for K12 libraries but with 3.3 it was opened up for all library types
Policy setup is done through the Symphony client by a system administrator, so someone in the organization needs a java workflows client- there's a separate tab for StaffWeb configuraiton in the User Access policies where the selections for StaffWeb functions can be checked or unchecked for access. In the screenshot it looks super-easy to configure.
The user environment is very simple and clean, with basic tabs and few selections. It would probably be entirely suitable for most circ staff in larger public libraries. The screenshot on display had only circulation and reports available, but an administration tab is available amongst others..
Adminsitration of staffweb allows customization of preferences for the circ station, the receipt printers, and also a template builder for simplified cataloging templates (see below). Admin setup can change defaults for lookups as well as the overall appearance and color scheme of the interface; miscellaneous configuration defaults for the Staffweb client are also available for customization in a more simplified interface.Preference files can be configured for either the user level, the station library level, or the system level.
Q: Can it support multiple schools/ districts each with different configurations and branding?
Looks like yes, using the station library preference configuration.
Circulation functioins available include the standards- checkout/in; user/item searches; display user; item status; placing holds. User information is configured the same way, and adding a new user looks relatively intuitive. Fields are available that allow a level of detail that is suitable for public library user records.
Ability to search user by typing last name into the user ID field is a nice feature- I wonder if this coujld be incorporated into Symphony in the future? It makes a lot of sense as a nice shortcut.
Cataloging options are sufficient for a lot of uses- especially with the ability to create and modify cataloging templates in addition to the delivered templates.
Report groups that are available: circulation, cataloging, user, and inventory. Mostly lists, counts, and labels (other than the inventory group). In user reports, for instance, there are 4 lists that are available- and the number of options are very limited (in a good way!) without multiple tabs- at least in the report that was on the screenshot. Output can be configured for html, csv or xml output in the basic options, which is a nice feature. It looks like it runs a good variety of browsers, and does require Adobe flash.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Reminder about school and academic accounts
This is a reminder to public library staff, please do NOT edit or checkout on the accounts of academic library cards (Wilm U., Wesley, DTCC, SXVT). Academic accounts are set-up and maintained differently then public library accounts and have many different rules.
If a student wants to check-out an item or use the computer at a public library, please make them a public library card. It is perfectly acceptable for students to have two cards in the system – a public library card and an academic library card. These accounts do not get combined and should stay separate.
Thanks for your assistance!
Beth-Ann
If a student wants to check-out an item or use the computer at a public library, please make them a public library card. It is perfectly acceptable for students to have two cards in the system – a public library card and an academic library card. These accounts do not get combined and should stay separate.
Thanks for your assistance!
Beth-Ann
Friday, February 12, 2010
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
managing favorites
This is copied over from the main blog. A couple of patrons have requested assistance with removing favorites, because of a perceived excess volume of email- as noted, if you select to receive notices every time a book about vampires is added, that might mount up. As you may know from your own experience, this service does not work at all well for staff profiles, unfortunately.
You may have already signed up to receive email notifications when works by favorite authors, or works on certain subjects, are added to the catalog (if you haven't, you can click here to see a quick instructional video). Once you check a certain author or subject as a favorite, the library system software sends out automated weekly emails that are customized to your specified preferences. It's another way of making the library yours.
But what happens if you want to change the settings? Maybe you've used this service to drill down on a particular topic of interest, and you feel you've learned enough, or perhaps a particular author has been disappointing you or your tastes have changed. Also, possibly you thought that you REALLY liked books about vampires, and are surprised at just how many books are being written on the subject! (this is an easy situation to get into when you record subjects as favorites, because many fiction books are cataloged under very broad subject classifications- subject favorites work better in non-fiction) It's easy enough to get into your favorites settings and remove favorites- play the 1 minute video below or click on 'play in full screen' to see a larger version:
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