The Ubiquitous Librarian

Student Reviews of LibGuides & SubjectsPlus

We are in the pre-planning process of transitioning over to a new subject guide system. Two of the products that we are seriously considering are LibGuides and SubjectsPlus. (A big thanks to the taskforce for all their work.)

I asked a few students to provide some quick feedback looking at another school’s guide for their discipline—here’s what I got back.

LibGuides

Student #1
hard to scan text, too wordy, not enough differentiation between title
and description of databases. not enough focus on the main content -
it is battling for the reader's attention with 2 sidebars. the site
design is repulsive, rounded corners make it look like they're trying
to go web 2.0 but failing miserably and it doesn't work well with the
homepage which is more grid/linear oriented than rounded corners
and modules.

Student #2
- there's too much red
- it's hard to read
- the search bar was hard to find
- the "meebo" feature looks pretty cool... is there a way to guarantee
that my questions would be answered? is there a program where i would
get the answer if i went offline?
- there should be an outline or description about the tabs because the
name of the tabs were really unclear...

Student #3
Libguides doesn't seem very helpful at all.  I just look for a list of the
journals/databases that GT has access to & I check those out.   

SubjectsPlus

Student #1
good, accessible navigation. headings in blue blocks clearly separate
different portions of the site that serve different tasks. interesting
use of icons to depict extra metadata about the databases visually.
descriptions have good line-height and are not too verbose to be
unhelpful. wouldn't hurt to wrap text in the main content area
earlier.. 15+ words per line is on the edge of being annoying to read.
main content is a bit too long, perhaps use domtab to load different
areas of text via JS. sidebar is helpful and spaced out well, albeit
the lower elements are too wordy for the area.

Student #2
- i like the "try these first" box that pops up
- the red/green padlocks that appear to show what i can/cannot use is
really helpful
- the Research by Subject: Business--Industry Information section at the
top should stand out more. it doesn't really look important when actually
it saves a lot of time scrolling...
- the main horizontal bar is amazing! drop down lists that bring you to
specific pages is a great feature
- the option to hide or show the key is GREAT!
- a picture of the librarian is also helpful

Student #3
really dislike the popup that you would have to X out of every time.
It's useful to have the most common journals on top, but the popup makes
me feel like I'm being assaulted by advertisements. But I like how the layout
takes up the entire browser window. I don't really understand the 'lock' symbols
next to the journal titles. 

Personally I prefer LibGuides—it feels more modern and the features offer a lot of possibilities… but that’s librarian thinking. Students, at least these three, seemed to prefer the simpler of the two. I hope to get a few more responses back—if so I’ll post them here, but we’re on the verge of finals and they have better things to do than review subject guides.

Summary: It’s easy to get caught up with the flashy new toy, but I guess we just need to keep asking ourselves— who are these guides for: us or them?

Computer Availability Status Map: remixed

This was a nice editorial in the student newspaper about our computer availability map.

Also see: Computer Availability @ the GT Library: a status map

Social–enabled Library Websites? The Post-It Note Concept

I pitched an idea last week that didn’t meet resistance, but didn’t have a big bandwagon either. Here is the gist of the story.

Last year when we did the Exam Cram one of the things that we wished we had was an online message board so that students could form their own study groups, share notes, etc. We compromised with a whiteboard solution.

Presently we have a big push to gather student feedback for a small renovation we’re planning. There are several metrics that we’re using, but I really want to also offer an anonymous forum style message board so that we can ask questions and get feedback about furniture, layout, design, function, etc.

This led me to think about a wider need for social interactions throughout our entire website. NCSU has a nice forum which they embed on their Commons site. I’d like to take it a step further and embed “talk” pages throughout a larger portion of the library site. Here is a conceptual drawing:

Basically you take your mega forum, which works like all other message boards with threaded conversations all on one page—but then also embeds select threads or topics onto appropriate web pages. Students have questions about the equipment we rent out, here is a way they can post questions, get answers, see what others have said, etc. Or what about printing or events or workshops? Everything would be more social and at least there will be an offer of interaction.

Another example: With a recent environmental display in the library, a student used a post-it note to comment about the information on the wall. We took it down, but this type of interaction would be ideal for a message board environment because individuals could have a dialogue about the display materials and it could result in a larger community discussion.

Yeah, I know there are issues with “appropriateness” and “security” and “identity” and “moderation”—that’s all to be worked out over the summer, but I think the concept is worth a shot. Imagine a pile of post it notes neatly arranged in a digital format expressing opinions and feedback relevant to the web page they are viewing… we’ll see what happens.

Second Life Revisited – are we ready to provide classroom support?

I attended an AIMA event this week about Second Life. The presentation, How Virtual Worlds are Impacting Interactive Marketing , featured an all-star panel with reps from major companies. Below are some highlights. Also, some thoughts about the role of the librarian within the virtual world.

InterContinental Hotels Group - Del Ross

• Real world hotel corporation that offers virtual rooms in Second Life. Just as you might have a business meeting in the real world, they can also provide space for virtual meetings.
• Right now it is free, but planning to charge in the future. 100 – 500 Linden dollars, which is a little less than 1 dollar real money.
• They provide rentable space that offers privacy, security, suitable space, and support (audio, video, PPT, etc)
• Online Room Reservation form and tons of other info.
• If you don't own land in SL, no place to meet, conduct business—they are trying to fit that need—their slogan is “the place to meet”
• Informal space, convention space, lounge, executive board room – space can be configured depending upon the need.
• SL showcases their “real” world value—virtual space mirrors the physical spaces that they make available to customers. They are in the business of “business environments” regardless of the location.

Weather Channel - Paul Greenberg

• Major theme of weather channel is to show how weather connects to your life—more than just the science, but also the psychology of how weather has an impact on us.
• Wanted to build a Second Life space that supports TV programming
• Stay. Play. Watch.
  (stay = community areas for shared experiences)
  (play = do stuff, interact)
  (watch = video programming)
• Hurricane environment – witness & experience what a storm is like, virtually
• Sports activities= surfing, biking, skiing – all with variable weather conditions
• Has improved the impression/perception of the Weather Channel
• The numbers are low, compared with TV/Radio/Print/Web—however SL provides an engagement experience that is more valuable and memorable

Turner - Rhonda Lowry

• Rethink spam = Socialization, Participation, and Motivation (SPaM)
• The “real” CNN has iReport, basically citizen reports. They started a Second Life iReport program—basically correspontants reporting on the news that happens in SL. CNN provides them with tools and training (one hour weekly training sessions in-world about taking photos, shooting video, interviewing, writing copy, etc) teach them how to be reporters—they report about SL, CNN provides them with a sense of legitimacy / authenticity -- in return, CNN gets to expand reputation as THE news provider. More info here.  

Kaneva - Chris Klaus

• Kaneva is a virtual world similar to Second Life, however they emphasize being yourself (as opposed to dragons or super models)
• Emerging trend is watching TV online in a virtual world with your friends. They have experimented with the show 10 items or less by having cast join fans in the virtual environment to interact, ask questions, and hang out.
• Also stream behind-the-scenes at tv sets / awards show. Screen Actors Guild Awards had extra cameras, could watch crew setup and take down set—and talk with others online while watching.
• Interior designers can work with clients –use virtual space to model rooms—see what colors and furniture will look life before purchasing.

Coca-Cola - Mike Donnelly

• Before Coke got involved they went to the “leaders” of Second Life—the major blogs, the virtual citizens with power and popular land, etc and talked with them about how Coke might fit in. When entering a new territory or using a new technology, need to listen and learn, don't think you know what they want—ask advice, council, and even permission.
• They didn't want to buy and build up an island. Lots of companies did that and are stuck with empty islands—Coke rented land, but ultimately try to embedded themselves within community (people wear coke clothing)
• Virtual Thirst contest – winner – objective was to design virtual coke machine—however not necessary a literal vending machine—but some type of experience that captures the essence of Coke. Design and build the vending machine of the future (not necessarily about bottles of soda though)
• Once Coke decided that they wanted to participate in Second Life—discovered that the brand already existed—people has used the logo
• Wanted to build on the idea of “quenching” thirst = knowledge, experience, entertainment, communication, inspiration

Second Life, Classroom Instruction, and the Role of the Library

Fittingly enough, I received an email the evening of this event from a Georgia Tech faculty member. He is an English instructor wanting to include a SL component to his course. This includes several in-world meetings along with virtual space and support for his students to develop a small project.

What's the role of the library here? I mean, if a professor asks for face-to-face classroom support we provide that. If they ask for web support via WebCT or via an online service like Horizon Wimba, we'd most likely provide that too. But what about Second Life? How many of us are ready to offer services there?

I feel that librarians can benefit from a basic understanding of virtual worlds for cases just like this… and this example is going to become more common. Imagine the possibility of say a physics class in which you have a lecture, a lab, and a virtual world homework assignment (3 distinct components.) Maybe an aerospace class conducts experiments in zero gravity. Maybe a class of civil engineers and a class of architects have to work together on building a structure, just like in the real world.

SL has a lot of info for educators . Are you ready to help them? If the classroom and the curriculum are heading into a virtual environment, shouldn't libraries follow? Or even better, shouldn't they lead the way? The idea of setting up a virtual reference desk and waiting around for patrons is preposterous, but collaborating with faculty and creating engagement experiences is the future of education.

Some of my other SL posts:

Augmented Reality – the Georgia Tech model

Second Thoughts – the Woodbury Model

The Year of the User Experience Librarian

It looks like Amanda and I started a trend. The “User Experience Librarian” is catching on: Agnes Scott & Miami University (Oxford)

Who’s next?

My job is very different than what’s being posted at other libraries though. I do less with technology now, particularly 2.0 stuff, compared to when I was a reference and instruction librarian. It feels like half my day is spent writing and responding to emails—very 1.0.

LibSHARE: a library-wide communications environment

I wrote some time ago about a departmental wiki and the less than stellar result. I know, I know—wikis are so passé these days. Everybody’s got a wiki, why am I wasting your time? I totally agree. New Year, time to move on.

Anyway, we’re now in a soft launch phase of a library-wide collaborative web space. (We’ve blotted out the term intranet because that’s so 1990’s.) Our Systems Department (and a wide assortment of non-systems staff) pulled together an instance of Clearspace software which we have dubbed Lib-Share. It offers a suite of tools including blogs, wikis, photo/file sharing, polls, announcements, and message boards. It also authenticates using our campus accounts—so there is no need to keep track of additional user names/passwords.

The main page looks like this:

Each department / unit has its own section and can set a variety of access privileges to the content. Some material might be limited to the department only, but the spirit of the space is openness.

We can also form groups to create a virtual working space, share documents/files, and take advantage of the various conversation/collaboration tools. Oh and it integrates nicely with Spark, our library-wide IM service:

So hopefully the original idea will be preserved—a unified space for all public service desks to share and manage their content. We’ll see how it goes.

Tagging in Compendex: social bookmarking for engineers

I have to give Elsevier their props-- they are really trying to improve their interfaces. Perhaps this is old news, but I was working with a grad student today and we were deep into Compendex and I noticed that they are offering tags. It's nice to see that these 2.0 technologies are finally finding their way into our databases.

How it works
When you do a search and view a citation you see this box:

Public = all registered Compendex users can see them
Private = just you
Institution = everyone at your school

I'm not sure how practical tags are because the Ei terms are pretty fantastic-- but from a voyeuristic stance it is fascinating to see what others have tagged. 

Groups
Probably the most useful application of this tagging system is the ability to create a group. These are tags that can only be viewed by other group members. This is great if you work in a highly specialized area and you want to share items of interest with others. What I especially like is that the groups are not limited to your own institution and that you can invite anyone else to be a member too, as long as they have access to Compendex. This allows researchers to interact with peers from other institutions and the ability to easily and quickly share information.

My Plan
Over Winter break I am going to experiment by creating a few groups based around a handful of the centers/labs that we have here at Georgia Tech. After tagging a few articles I'll invite several of the faculty members to join and offer to demonstrate the tagging feature to them and/or their graduate students. It could totally flop, but it should be a good test of the tagging feature.

So thanks Elsevier for trying something new. Glad to see all of our subscription money is going to good use. How about next you work on "group notes" so that we could leave messages or make comments about the research to our peers? Just something to think about.

Rethinking Video Games in the Academic Library

Stacey Greenwell over at The Uncommon Commons recently wrote about their welcome event . She works at the U of Kentucky, so it shouldn't be a surprise that basketball hoops were involved.

She ends her post stating:

“I've gone so far as to submit a proposal to purchase a few consoles for the library.”

It's nice to see such enthusiasm, but I've recently started to turn against gaming in academic libraries. I think its fine for special events or if you want to disguise it as a “study break” session, but trying to brand your library as someplace cool because of Madden Tournaments or that you have a Wii or Playstation available for checkout is weak. You play to a niche, maybe a big niche, but ultimately I think it deteriorates the mission of the academic library.

I've spent some time this semester visiting GT dorms and frat houses and they all have commons spaces with screens and projectors available to them. The gimmick of using video games to lure students into the library is off base, at least for my population. Sure we could easily turn ourselves into an arcade, but we already have one of those on campus and it's only about 100 yards away from the library, so why should we duplicate that effort?

I think a stronger position for the academic library is to aspire to offer the premiere productivity and study space on campus. We should provide something that isn't offered elsewhere and that fills a stated need.

In the long run, a better generation of buzz is through programming and partnerships, gather than Xboxs. I was pleasantly surprised today when I clicked a random date on our events calendar and saw the wide variety of offerings:

Keep in mind, we're undersized, and personally I think under funded, yet Tech is an entrepreneurial and scrappy library. (That's a compliment!) I like that we push a varied agenda of experiences, and I feel that academic libraries should attempt to inspire students, not just entertain them.

And sure, someday we'll probably have video games available for checkout. We do have a leading game critic on our faculty, but conversations with my users reveal that they'd prefer nicer quiet study spaces and more computers and printers, rather than video game zones. It's a matter of priorities. For $1,000 we could buy a console and a load of games, but I think that would be “off code” with out intention. I also think that there are better opportunities for relaxation and leisure than this .

So Stacey, good luck with your effort. I'll be curious to follow your progress, but be mindful of the cause and effect of gaming in the library. I'd much rather have my students complain about a noisy Calculus 2 review group rather than a bunch of kids pretending to be guitar heroes. When gaming becomes a daily occurrence, it quickly loses it's charm.

Augmented Reality – a Second Life Experiment

I've teamed up with a computer science professor who owns an island in Second Life. We're inviting (recruiting) students to hangout, explore, and learn the basics of the software. Our rational is that if there is an interest, let's say 20 students or more, then we'll work toward purchasing an island for them. The idea is still in the very early stages, but ideally we're following this basic principal: just as a student can checkout a book, they can also checkout a plot of virtual land. In this framework it becomes a discovery experience.

The premise is that since so many of our students use digital design tools for class work, they can also benefit from exposure to Second Life. Maybe SL isn't sustainable long-term, that's fine, we can just move to another virtual environment. My personal feeling about technology is that everything you learn can be applied elsewhere, therefore the more you know the better.

Some benefits:

•  Students will have the opportunity to explore and experiment within a large virtual world.

•  Students will have the freedom of self-expression and an outlet for creativity.

•  Students will collaborate with others, fostering leadership, project management, critical thinking and planning, team-building, and communication skills.

•  Students will apply design principles, engineering mechanics, problem solving, physics, geometry, and aesthetics within a 3D modeling universe.

•  Faculty will have virtual space and resources for instructional purposes.

That's it in a nutshell. We've set a few dates aside to see if anyone shows up. User interest and participation will guide this project. It could be a total bust, and that's fine. I have found SL very interesting, but so many educational (and corporate) efforts end up ghost towns. I want something more interactive and popular. A lot of the library stuff I've seen out there seems to be by-librarians for-librarians, and that's not the direction I want to go. I am more interested in something that targets my patrons, something that inspires the imagination.

Another unfortunate trend sprouting up are “no access” islands. (UT-Austin, Stanford, SJSU) I think it's fine if people want to buy private land, but don't place it in the middle of other open access educational environments. It's a country club mentality that doesn't belong there.

Here is our main flyer (front & back), courtesy of Dottie Hunt.

Second Thoughts on Second Life: Lessons from Woodbury University

I’m still not sure how I feel about Second Life in terms of patron interaction. Everyday it seems some new library, college, or corporation is setting up a presence… but so what? I fly around and see islands filled with ghost towns. I think it is a creative environment for librarians and liked minded individuals (artists, teachers, museum and history folks) to gather and chat, but as a branch location, I have some skepticism.

One thing that bothers me is the concept of “banning” people from our premises. I guess this happens in real life too, but the other day I saw someone acting ridiculous during a lecture. That person was swiftly banished from the entire Info Island region. Was that really necessary? This doesn’t seem to embrace the 2.0 philosophy of the user-directed experience. Just because librarians create sexy avatars doesn’t make them any less stodgy. Proper rules, proper behavior, proper etiquette… that sounds more like my grandmother rather than the next generation of library services.

Speaking of which… some unfortunate librarian who has to write peer-reviewed articles in order to make tenure should do a study on the level of service quality at the Second Life Reference Desk. Maybe compare it with email, chat, and in-person services if you’re really ambitious. I was hanging around the Info Island Ref Desk the other day and a patron asked a scientific question. The librarian on duty responded: You should search Google Scholar. And the patron flew away. You can place the librarian into a new location but you can’t get rid of that “go look at those books over there” or “it’s in Academic Search Premier, of course!” attitude.

Everything aside, I was inspired by a recent discovery. I was hovering around several different University islands, beautiful campus environments that are relatively unpopulated, when I noticed a crowd at Woodbury University. I dropped in but could not find anyone. My map picked up at least 15 people, so I wandered around. You can see that it looks pretty straightforward: buildings, roads, trees, a campus.

Then… I came across a secret door that took me underground. Beneath the main campus was an entire second world—the world for students, by students. A handful of them were playing a game, others were uploading photos, and another was looking at a news headline feed. I had found their sanctuary. This is where they hung out. This was their home, just as all the librarians like to hangout together around the Ref Desk.

Dorm rooms:

A large workshop/office space:

A large commons area:

KFC:

It’s very geek-chic.

This was truly user-generated, user-centric, user-designed--- unlike our massive fortresses. Woodbury got it right. On the surface they have the “campus” entity, but down below is the space for students. I spoke with one of the principle designers and he said that the University purchased the island to support the School of Media, Culture, and Design and specifically a course on the study of virtual worlds.

This has recharged my thoughts about the potential of Second Life. I think there is definitely an opportunity to offer compelling, interactive, creative environments for users, but it starts by leaving out all of our preconceived notions of “libraries” and building something unique. I hope to get the chance to demonstrate this, but time is limited these days—maybe next summer?

Oh and if you plan to visit Woodbury U, you’d better come strapped; the place is infected with zombies!