Session 5- Service at Point of Need: SharePoint & Mobile Tools

This one was for Reference Librarians. Towson University and Howard County Library (Maryland) are currently using these reference PDA style tablets for mobility and service at the point of need.

SharePoint and Mobile Tools
Speakers: David Dahl, Kay Kazinski, James Kelly, Donny Frank-Rice

SharePoint is a Microsoft Technology.

Why mobile reference?
- Improves customer service
- Provide faster service at time and point of need
- Incorporate pro-active approach to Reference

Details of Mobile Reference Model
- Based on Orange County Library Model
- Funding: State library and FCPL contribution
- Team: 9 Volunteers and various staff from branches and departments across system

Equipment
- Site survey
- Installation of signal coverage

Vocera Communications Badges (phone system)
- Weighs less than 2 ounces
- Wireless, hands-free
- Locate staff by name, location or title
- Voice activated

Samsung Q1 Mobile Computers (mobile reference computer)
- Networked to desk printers
- 7 inch displays
- Weighs less than 2 pounds

460 hours of Mobile Reference service

7,584 patrons reached during test pilot

Pros
- Staff had more floor time, which prevents security issues
- Staff can multi-task
- Desk time lessened
- Staff became more tech-saavy

Questions to consider
- Will your staff be interested?
- Can you secure funding?
- Is Mobile Reference just an additional service? A permanent fixture?


SharePoint

Reference Portal- Collaborating for Librarians

Centralized location for sharing information

Why SharePoint?
- Customizable
- High level IT experience not necessary, for end-users or designers
- Can offer training for SharePoint
- Free- if you own Windows Server 2003
- SQL server database is required

4 Features of Reference Portal

- Messaging system
- Issue Tracker (computer problems, facilities problem)
- Wiki Page
- Desk Tracker

You can create a new website in SharePoint particularly for Reference Librarian

You can track meetings, minutes, etc.

Tips and Suggestions

Get a beta site even keep it after production
- Access now
- Who needs access
- Be prepared for
- Make sure sites match
- Deploy early
- Make sure you have ample training

These are so neat. They look like little TV screens.

Here is the Samsung Q1 up close. It's cool.

From Computers in Libraries 2009 Conference

This was the last session..Blog Ya tomorrow!

Session 4- Open Source Library Implementation

Open Source Library Implementation

Karen Kohn and Eric McCloy are both from Arcadia University, explained in detail how they were able to pull off switching from Sirsi to Koha.

Koha runs on Linux, takes very little space and is fast.

This session was mainly about how the Arcadia University library got ready to implement Koha from Sirsi.

Who should be on board?
IT
Library Staff
Facilitating Faculty

Motivation for Migration
- No access to data
- Website design
- Unresponsive customer service
- Hard to upgrade and modify

Pros
- 12% cost savings
- Broke project into chunks
- Able to see some improvements quickly, faster federated search

Cons
- Staff time for testing (expensive)
- Could not pay for overlap support
- Delay in catalog changes being displayed

How it was implemented?
- Dropped Sirsi
- Used Savings to get Master Key working
- Dumped nightly from Sirsi to Koha
- Did a Z39.50 search from site to Koha
- Tested and debugged frequently

Issues to consider
- STRONG IT vs. Librarians relationships (working together)
- Staff and Faculty knowledge is important

Here is Arcadia's Landman Library looks like with the Open Source software Koha as their Integrated Library System.

I love this library catalog. It feels like you're on Amazon.com!

What do you guys think?

Session 3- Unconferences

Unconferences
Speakers: Steve Lawson, Kathryn Greenhill, John Blyberg, Stephen Francoeur

This session was a little "different". Most people already knew about this subject. I was totally lost.

But I did take notes:

Planning an Unconference

What is an Unconference?
These are very informal conferences that are often called "Library Camp" or Podcamps, Barcamps, XCamps, depends on the field of interest.

Difference between traditional conference and unconference
- Planned and facilitated by participants
- Sometimes completely virtual
- Less costly
- Sometimes does not require travel
- Open Source Sharing

Library Unconferences- How to create an Unconference (taken directly from CNN… they told us :))

1) Create a wiki – for sign up and topic choosing
See BarCamp.org and BrainJams.org for help with wiki setup.
2) Find sponsors that won’t interfere
3) Post author Harrison Owen's Law of Two Feet: Any person neither learning from nor contributing to a group discussion must walk to another one. (This is the motto of Unconferences.)
What goes on at an Unconference?

Participants post topics on boards, consolidate and do discussion groups.

From Computers in Libraries 2009 Conference

Participants are the facilitators, this makes for more information exchange and diversity of topics.

Okay, gotta go, next session starting now.

Session 2- Open Source Browsers

OKAY!! Information Overload......!!!

This session was amazing. It might just be because I'm a Firefox Fan and this was mainly about all the cool stuff you can do with Firefox and other web browsers that allow you to customize it for yourself and your users.

The speaker Jessamyn West, Community Technology Librarian, Randolph Technical Career Center in Vermont, Metafile Technical Support Director, is a Firefox fan as well. She gave us so much information. But it was like good food. I couldn't get enough. I went to talk to her after the session, she has a lot of good information.

Here are some of the notes from this session:


Open Source Browsers

Speaker: Jessamyn West, Community Technology Librarian, Randolph Technical Career Center, Vermont

Librarian.net/talks/cil2009

This session is for FIREFOX fans!

Open Source Browsers in general

Are there any other Open Source (free) browsers (some of these are TEXT only):
- Chrome- PC only
- Flock
- Amaya
- Camino
- Dillo
- Galeon
- NetSurf
- SeaMonkey
- Shiira
- Elinks

Some notes on other Open Source Browsers:
Amaya can read different mark-up language. Recommends trying only to know different things browsers can do.

SeaMonkey (compares to NetScape) still looks like NetScape, also has email and news reading…like Firefox (Thunderbird).


Example of Shiira, an open-source web browser.

From Computers in Libraries 2009 Conference

Tidbits about Internet Market share
FF market share
W3schools- 46%
Netapplications- 22%
Statcounter- 31%

Firefox has:
- Themes/Skins
Can make browser the school colors
Add neat buttons

- Smart Keywords
Create frequent searches

- Plug-ins esp. search
- Add-ons
Adblock & bugmenot- blocks ads from web pages
Better Gmail- ad block for mail
Customizegoogle- customize Google search
DownThemAll- download more than one file at a time
Firebug- inspects bugs on websites
History submenus- check your browser history by day
Link evaluator- OCLC owned- checks all links and says if your links are working

- Greasemonkey- post processes Web pages to fit your configuration before you see it.
Scripts to customize web use
- Yahoo mail welcome skipper
- ****Facebook ad nuker & autologin & auto-colorize
- Minimalist Wikipedia (simple Wikipedia)
- Configurable Flickr Home Page
- YouTube tool- shows biggest version of video
- Metafilter (MeFi)- scripts for Librarians (book icon that goes next to profile users who are Librarians)
- YouTube Comment Hider
- Invisibilty cloak- hides your IP address
- Play Music Now tool
- Add other search links to Google
- Book Burro
- Foxmarks
- Zotero
- LibX- contact LibX people (open source)

- Multiple profiles from Firefox
High visibility profiles (accessibility profile)
Page reader (audio)
Can run in same computer

SOMETHING TO TRY!!!!
About: config
Type in About:config in Firefox to be able to customize your Firefox browsers

Check out the presentation:
Librarian.net/talks/cil2009

Session 1- Open Source Software

Open Source Software

This session is extremely interesting. Eric Lease Morgan Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department University Libraries of Notre Dame says that Open Source Software is not "free". You still need the SKILLS to use the software, which could cost you more than a closed source software.

Opening Statements
If libraries are about data, research and knowledge and we use computers to control information then we need open source software to control the way WE want to distribute and maintain information.

Open Source Software does NOT mean “free” software. It’s liberating. You are FREE to use the software and modify it any way you want.

Still may have same expenses with open source software as regular software.

From Computers in Libraries 2009 Conference

Open source software is about:
- Free cost
- Community users

Examples of Open Source Software:
- Most of the Internet runs on Open Source Software
- SendMail- majority of software the emails your emails is open source
- Apache

“Library Land” Open Source Software (software for Libraries):
- Lucene
- Zebra
- WordPress
- VuFind
- Evergreen
- Blacklight
- Koha
- Scriblio
- SwishE

8 Skills Needed to Successfully Use Open Source Software
Library Skills
1. Collections
2. Organization
3. Preservation/Archiving
4. Public Service

Computing Skills
5. Relational Databases
6. XML
7. Indexing
8. Scripting Language

Advantages
Full control to use and modify software
No copyright infringement issues
Free of costs

Disadvantages
Takes different set of skills to use

Questions that were asked after session:
Q: How does a manager feel comfortable with certain softwares?
A: Consider these things:
- Is there documentation?
- Is there a community of users?
- Is the software singular or comes with “spyware”?
- What are the primary Google results?

Q: What does Open Source mean to libraries?
A: It’s a common good. These programs are basically given away (free) for anyone to use. If you notice, Librarians also “give away” information. It is good to have different alternatives of production and systems to keep costs down and continue to provide “outside the box” services. Everyone has Microsoft Office, but many people don’t know that Open Office has more features and is easier to use. It’s about having full control to modify and customize.


Very good session. We did the WAVE at the beginning to wake everybody up. Next sessions starts in 15 minutes.