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: User Generated Content

Speaker: Roy Tennant

• Focus on library managed sites
• Definition: Content = photos, movies, documents
• Descriptive Content = tags, descriptions, ratings, reviews
• More (decent) content is better
• more access is better
• Can help provide more personalized service?
• Foster interaction and community

"We don't know everything" - Farcas

• Examples:
• kete.net.nz - public repository of content; a story of community told by it's people
• hhpl.on.ca/greatlakes/glimages - asking community for help in identification
• Worldcat - add to it, rate & review (why can't we do this?)
• LC on Flickr - tagging
• higher profile for the collections - they went where the users are
• Community engagement
• Got 11,000 contacts
• Exploit the knowledge of the masses
  
• Boston Public Library also now on Flickr
• steve.museum - museum social tagging project

What to know:

• Our idea of "content" may not be theirs.
• It'll be messy, but that's mostly OK
• There are ways to increase effectiveness through intelligent usage

Issues:

• What are your goals?
• Are you set up appropriately to meet those goals?
• Are there strategies to maximize the benefit?
• How to distinguish between user and library content
• Will you need to moderate?
• Is the impact worth the investment?

User engagement is a good thing
Need to get up to speed on fostering engagement
Get savvy about using this stuff effectively

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