CIL2008: Web Manager's Academy Preconference

I'm just getting around to posting about the great pre-conference I attended on Sunday presented by Darlene Fichter, Frank Cervone, Jeff Wisniewski, & Marshall Breeding. In 6 hours we learned about a variety of topics relating to redesign, which is what we're about to do at HCPL, so this was a great refresher.

One of the first things they asked us to do was write down as a table what we wanted to learn. Darlene Fichter put it up as a tag cloud - what a great use of web 2.0.

To Ponder: 25 Questions to Ask Your Leadership Team & Yourself - Are We Ready for the Web 2.0 Digital Age? - Based on a post on Tame The Web.

Main points:

• The library web presence is bigger than your website
• Make sure you're looking at your usage statistics to see what people want
• When planning a redesign, use SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
• Set up a redesign committee - While I think it's helpful to get input, I like what Seth Godin had to say about creating a great website - #1 Fire the Committee
• To maximize web 2.0, blogs have to embrace participation by: writing in a conversational tone, inviting participation, accepting comments, participating in the conversation in a timely fashion
• We're great at content, but web users are fairly superficial. Websites need to be aesthetically pleasing. It's hard, if not impossible to recover from a negative impression.
• Most users come to a site to perform specific tasks, so emphasize the highest priority tasks so that users have a clear starting point.
• Generally, you should only have 7 +/- 2 categories at the top.
• Use a flexible vs. a fixed design, where possible.
• The web safe palette is dead - be as colorful as you want
• Don't look at library sites for ideas, look at where your users are going - Amazon, Home Depot...
• Rather than a revolutionary change, build for evolution. Try A/B testing - Amazon.com does this a lot.
• Accessibility is critical for core content, BUT value added content doesn't HAVE to be supported by all browsers.

People have a tendency to never look at a slim rectangular area that's above the page's main headline - Jacob Nielsen

• While important content still needs to be above the fold, users will scroll to the bottom.
  
• Jakob's Law: "Users spend most of their time on other sites that your site" - Jakob Nielsen
  
• What are they experiencing?
• Highly visual
• Highly personalized
  
• Highly interactive
• User generated
• Simpler is NOT always better. Amazon experiments using A/B testing. They tested a page by removing extra features. They added them back when sales went down.
• Design for scent. Users will drill down if they feel like they're getting somewhere. You don't have to stick to the 3 click rule anymore.
  

A few cool tools:

• Frogreview.com - Hysterical usability videos
• CMS Matrix - Find a CMS by function
• Google Analytics - Install code on site to track (for free) usage and other web analytics.
• Yahoo User Pattern Library - Optimal solutions to common problems.
• Google Webmaster Tools - OMG! Why haven't I seen this before.
• Sitemap.org - Info on creating site maps.
  

Some ideas:

• Add a Flickr group for HCPL to let customers submit photos
• Google has suggestions by drop down. Use in search boxes for electronic journals, etc.
  

CIL2008: What's Hot in RSS & Social Software?

Presented by Steven M. Cohen

Links up at PBwiki, so I'm only going to highlight the sites I found particularly interesting:

Google Reader lets you share items to which people can subscribe & has a mobile version.
Libworm.com - Search the Library blogosphere
Aiderss.com - Gives statistics on your blog, can analyze your .opm file to show you which of your feeds is most popular.
Citebite.com- Link directly to quotes in websites. A similar service is Fleck.com.

CIL2008: Tech Tools for Effectively Managing Information

Speakers: Roger Skalbeck & Barbara Fullerton

Interesting experimental presentation style. Rather than a PowerPoint, the presenters had several plain slides with links to screencasts of the sites/software they were discussing. While there were some technical glitches, overall it was an interesting way of presenting. Biggest issue is they started running short on time.

All the links are on the CIL2008 Wiki, so I'll only highlight the ones I thought looked especially interesting.

• SendMeRss - Get RSS feeds by email. Has a widget that can be added to a site. Interesting
• Kuler (see also: 25 Online Color Generators) - Get color inspiration from Adobe. Has a desktop application as well. Use to create palettes. Can download swatch file for Dreamweaver.
  
• Conduit.com (see also: LibX) - Use to create a toolbar. Might be worth checking out as a replacement for HCPL toolbar, which has some issues with anti-virus software. Gives statistics on use. Automatic updates.
  
• PonyFish - Create feeds for a site that doesn't have RSS. limited to 5 sites for free.
• Firebug - Firefox extension that lets you test different colors and fonts on your website.
• Scribefire (see also: WIndows LiveWriter, Qumana) - Firefox extension that lets you publish to multiple blogs.
• GifUP - They didn't get a chance to say much about this. The site say it's a GIF animator and Avatar generator. Something to look at more.
• TechCrunch and Adobe Media Player (see also: VLC Media Player) - Watch YouTube videos offline
  

CIL2008: Mashups for Non-technies

Speaker: Jody Condit Fagan

Great presentation on the use of Yahoo Pipes to create mash-ups of rss data. Since the presentation is online - http://cil2008.pbwiki.com/f/Mashups+for+the+Nontechies_Final.ppt - on the CIL2008 Wiki, along with additional material from Jody, I'll just mention some key points.

• No programming involved - just plug in information
• Mashup information with a map, so the feed has a map
• Idea: Combine RSS of Events feeds with a map?
• Website is built for new users
• Idea: Use pipes to create search boxes?
• Pipe output can be read in any reader
• Use RSS to Javascript to convert to HTML for website
• Copy anyone else's pipe & modify - browse popular pipes
• Get Amazon account for web development use - data sent by XML which can be manipulated
• Can use Google mash-up editor along with Yahoo Pipes

CIL2008: Widgets, Tools & Doodads

Awesome presentation from Frank Cervone & Darlene Fichter. They were part of the pre-conference I attended as well. Some really useful stuff here. See the presentation for all the tools.

| View | Upload your own

Some of my favorite suggestions are:

• Feng-Gui - Alternative to eye-tracking
• Browsershots - Get screenshots of your website in different browsers
• Photoshop Express - Online free version of the great graphic package. I have the full Photoshop, but this would be great for our branch staff
• Addthis.com - Create a bookmarking sharing button for your website
• Google Gadgets - A variety of widgets for your site - mentioned Google Countdown: could be used to countdown to SRP or Staff Awards or...
• Google Translate My Page - customizable
• Anonymouse - Check if licensed resources are available to non-library users
• Prism - For Firefox, opens a web application in it's own window separate from browser

And finally, the lolinator.com - transform your website!

As an aside, my LOL Name is Growla Cheezburger

CIL2008: Library Web Presence

Speakers (Emily Rimland & Binky Lush) from Penn State University Libraries talked about doing a Research Jump Start page geared toward undergraduate students - primrarily incoming freshmen - who would be better served by something simpler than their main page.

They created several widgets for the page - and for use on external pages such as iGoogle, Netvibes, or Pageflakes using Widgetbox.

I like that the widgets can be put on student's own pages. Widgetbox also provides analytics. While it offers widget creation for Facebook, it does not offer Facebooks social aspects.

The other speakers (Kristina DeVoe & Derik Badman) were from Temple University Libraries discussing their implementation of the LibGuides product from Springshare. It offers an easy out of the box solution for staff to create interactive, modular subject guides. I've looked at Springshare a bit and will be investigating further, although it may not be necessary with the upcoming Drupal installation.

Temple's Guides

Other guide creation options were mentioned:
MyLibrary
SubjectsPlus
LibData
ResearchGuide
LibCourseBuilder
Social Bookmarking
Wikis

Presentation at MadInkBeard