Thanks Everyone!

Hi All,

Thanks so much for viewing the blog! As you can tell, my video capture skills need a bit of refinement, but it works for a first time (semi) live blogging experience. Special thanks to Erin and the folks at the Hidden Springs Library for the excellent help commenting and filming, and for letting me test out their FlipCam.

Any comments or suggestions are welcome, and hopefully we'll see you at ILA 2010!

Website Usability for Everybody

Ellie Dworak 1:30-2:45

• Can people do what they need to do quickly and without frustration on your website?
• Few different methods:
• Heuristic evaluation (evaluation checklist)
• Can do a google calendar plug in to feed the library hours to the front page
• it's important to stay focused and think about why and how each decision you make will get patrons what they need
• Cognitive walkthrough: reviewers complete tasks and ask themselves questions about how easy it is to meet their needs (counting clicks, etc.)
• top tier information should be reachable w/in three clicks
• think aloud protocol (aka traditional usability testing) observing people while they're doing things on your website and asking them to talk about why they're doing what they're doing
• just b/c people say they like one form of a website better doesn't actually mean they'll find it more useful; it's important to always test and observe to avoid this
• according to nielsen, you likely won't get any new information after you test three people
• try printing screenshots to give testees to ask them about how they'll complete tasks or where they will click- paper based testing saves time and can be done in groups or at many different places; it makes repeat testing much easier
• 
  

Using Mobile Devices in the Classroom

Chris Haskell, Boise State University ED Tech program 8:30am-9:30am

• repurpose cell phones, twitter and other social networking tools intended for other uses for educational purposes
• tools with modifications are part of educational evolution
• mobile devices allow students to create their own meanings and methods of leveraging resources
• send a text to your cell email; each cell number has a unique email address
• students can be engaged in scavenger or information hunts with text messaging/twitter/email and voice to email messaging; cell phone quests
• extend the classroom experience to the rest of their lives; reinforce principles we teach in the classroom with mobile devices
• show and tell information resource activities might be good for our library
• k7.net is a great voicemail to email method for asking questions or distributing messages.

Day 2 Update Pre-Breakfast

Day 1 Wrap Up

Librarians as Community Leaders

4:00pm- 5:00pm Mary Dewalt:

• building and empowering staff and communities
• Jamie La Rue's marketing/library pyramid; community involvement is the highest level of marketing and library work that will allow you to reach the greatest amount of library users; it can help you can touch an extra 15% of your communities
• staff is the face of the library inside and outside of the library
• empower staff and creating a learning organization is central to creating a library that can effectively reach out to large portions of the community
• communication between departments and different teams is key to empowering staff
• improvement occurs slowly over time
• connection to community doesn't happen automatically
• management and staff must both provide support for cultural shifts and community involvement
• tap staff interests and connections both within and outside of the library
• allow staff to have the power to decide how to spend certain funds; especially with programming
• stay tuned in to the community with media, public documents, meetings, community groups, and generally actively participating in things going on
• work to integrate into existing community organization activities
• remember that continuous improvement is important; over time getting involved gets easier and easier and more effective;
• all staff must be able to articulate the library's value (to the community) and their own value as library employees

ProQuest/E-Library Update

2:45-3:45pm

• Review extensive changes in elibrary resource we have access through with lili
• Does not recognize and or or not in the basic search; hove to use advanced search to get Boolean operators
• Boolean calculator is back
• Includes a popular search word cloud and auto complete in the search box
• Also includes a gallery at top of results screen and shows a gallery, multimedia materials, and related links/similar searches area
• Can sort results by websites
• Shows thumbnail images of pictures included in articles alongside search results
• Can sort and manipulate results created by topic searches; this feature wasn’t available to this prior to the update
• Can do a search in just publications about particular subjects eg: astronomy
• You can now translate text in articles in elibrary

Free Web Tools

Memo Cordova, Ellie Dworak, Kim Leeder 1:30pm-2:30pm

· (memo) Rss/readers/aggregrators: way of staying aware and updated for new content

· Delicious: with ellie

o Create delicious for style blogs

o Use delicious to create links on a particular topic for reading lists and subject guides

o Can create links to books in the catalog to organize and categorize in delicious then share with students and faculty

· Zotero; kim leeder

o Use to save subject specific articles for faculty and staff

o Gather articles together to share and/or use for curriculum development

o Totally searchable

o Must use with firefox

o Holds copies of articles (eg- pdf of proquest articles, etc) so fewer worries about broken links, etc.

· Bibme: kim leeder

o Pared down version of zotero

o Better for citations (books are probably best)

o Really helpful, though probably best to double check accuracy

o Citeulike works well for this too, but with more robust group functionality

· Jing

o Free online screencaputre tool

o Screen toaster and fireshot are both web-based tools that are similar

· Gliffy- flowcharts, diagrams, architectural tools, etc.

Pre Web Tools Comments

Day 1 Perkins Break

Pre Lunch with CJ Box

Evaluating Databases

Jenny Sememza and Cheryl Sebold from ISU, 10:00-11:00am

· Your collection development policy can help with decision making process for purchasing databases

· To get more information about databases to help with decision making, you can do a Google search for “subject term site:edu”

· Ac database assessment tool is a good resource for evaluating databases and also evaluating and comparing ebook platforms

· You can create lots of changes in database contracts and negotiate to add or subtract pieces and parts of clauses to work best for you library; don’t be afraid to ask publishers for changes

· Discounts are sometimes possible; don’t be afraid to ask about negotiating price

Post-Keynote Comments

Keynote Speaker, Jamie La Rue

Jamie La Rue, director Douglas County Library District in Colorado 8:30-9:30

· Addressing issues regarding challenging library materials

· The way to respond to religious bigotry is with exposure and shining light on prejudices

· The most common challengers of materials (98%)are not necessarily with political or religious slants, but from parents with children ages 3-5 and 14-16

· Don’t shut down conversations by demonizing challengers; invite them in and actively listen to get to the real hart ore reason of their challenges

· Tips to deal with folks who come to you with challenges:

o Apologize

o Keep an open body posture

o Use active listening skills; don’t be defensive

o Repeat their arguments back to them

o Help them find the material they were really looking for when their material they didn’t want or was offensive to them

o Have a process available for them if they still want to continue with their challenge

· Intellectual freedom is the right to complain bitterly about the things you don’t like

Update: SPOTTY WIRELESS ALERT

Wireless is totally unpredictable everywhere in the hotel except our room- lots of notes and videos to share, so expect an update later in the evening- complete with barbecue sauce!

We Made It!

We made it!

Big day ahead with breakfast at 8:00- more updates to come, including video courtesy of Liesl from Hidden Springs Library...

See you there cowpokes!

Welcome to ILA 2009 LIVE!

Keep your eyes locked to this blog starting Wednesday, September 30th to see what's going on at the Idaho Library Association Conference in (beautiful? We'll find out!) Burley Idaho!

Learn more about ILA here: http://2009ila.blogspot.com/

Cheers!

Lindsay