Author Archive | Paula Hane

Usage is up and funding is down. How to cope? The dynamic duo of Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter offered some great suggestions. Here’s a brief summary.

Darlene says one of your super heroes in tough times is your web presence—your virtual presence matters more than ever, and it often doesn’t take much investment.

Bump up your Ask a Librarian service. Check out www.meebo.com and wwww.plugoo.com

Frank says for situations where meebo doesn’t work, check out libraryh3lp. It’s a hosted service that provides functionality of a chat reference service with some additional functionality. It’s not free but fairly inexpensive.

Branches closed and programs cut? Look at how to deliver your library programs anywhere and save them for playback. Check out the free www.ustream.tv/

Quintura has a widget you can embed in library page to create a special kids search feature.

http://quinturakids.com

To market without a budget, be more social and use social media sites – use Facebook, Google Gadget, Flickr badge, etc. There are a lot of channels to use that don’t cost money. Be omnipresent.

Invest in your digital presence, such as add/expand digital photo collections. Offload hosting and tools to support comments and tags (scan and add to Flikr Pro account for $25).

Google Analytics is the best web log tool for free. Add a snippet of code to each page. Get detailed statistics. Then use these to identify your best resources and put energy into building those.

Check out the free survey tools out there to help you get data. One is www.survs.com.

To deal with travel  and training cuts, use Ustream for training.

TinyChat – use as a tool for quick meetings. Has public and private modes.

Check out the training offered at Webjunction.org. Some states subsidize this.

Prezi.com is a new online presentation tool. Takes a while to learn.

Add functionality through freeplug-ins, especially great ones for FireFox.

www.yolink.com

Read it Later from the Idea Shower (www.ideashower.com/ideas/launched/read-it-later)

Add fresh headlines to your library’s site—http://feed.informer.com

Save on software licenses. Shop around, switch to free (CutePDF).

Open source choices.

Is cloud computing for you?

Google Wave will be the future. It’s in private invite but keep an eye on it.

Paula J. Hane

ITI News Bureau Chief

An impressive group of movers and shakers from the California library world were on a panel on how to make a best case for boosting technology efforts during tough economic times. These are clearly unprecedented times—we’re all having to do more with less.

It’s often not just a director that is needed for approval of new technology. The director of the Napa City-County Library, Danis Kreimeier mentioned the wide range of stakeholders she needs to serve – library commissioners, library foundation, CEO, friends groups and branches in 4 cities, etc.

First things to consider before making a proposal:

What problem are you trying to solve? Really think about missions and goals

Whose problem is it– county, city ?

Is it sustainable? If you leave can anyone else run it?

She recommends using this:

“Communicating your Strategy: A Script,” by George Needham and Joan Frye Williams

(http://infopeople.org/training/past/2009/bls_strategic_thinking/Script_Strategic_Thinking.doc.)

She has used this and it actually works! Everything she’s proposed has passed. Here are the details:

First consider these:

Will it show?

Can it grow? – develop and evolve or a deadend?

Does it flow? – can community members access it?

Tell people briefly where you’re headed

Give them the facts that support your proposal

Tell them what actions you are proposing. Let them know that you thought things over before deciding what to do.

Describe how your strategy fits in with others plans and strategies (the city or county).

Explain how your strategy takes advantage of existing assets/resources (people, equipment, etc.).

Tell them how and when you’ll know whether this is successful.

Show your passion!

Invite them to join you.

Fred Cohn, assistant city manager, Monterey, says to banish the phrase “technology project” from your vocabulary – they’re business projects. Challenging times like this mean approach your business in a different way – it’s often easier to find resources from within. It’s really about marketing 101 – a process to identify and meet needs, take concepts and principles to heart (go check out a marketing book).

The panel then opened it up for audience involvement, asking what happened when they brought back a good technology idea and what strategy they used and what happened.

Barrier – internal processes for approval, including lawyers – and all that was for using a free product hosted elsewhere worth $100,000

Suggestion — try to understand what stakeholders have to lose and why they might be resisting.

Another good point – be prepared to answer tough questions such as what happens if the vendor of this free product goes under. Then what?

Barrier – concern for extra work when a new IM service was suggested.

Suggestion—support the request with data and request a pilot.

Paula J. Hane

ITI News Bureau Chief

It’s no surprise that modern librarians have to step into new roles—the possibilities are evolving and expanding. The discussion here at IL2009 was particularly timely, given the current ongoing heated discussion and upcoming vote for SLA to change its name to the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, or ASKPro. (For the details, see the NewsBreak by Cindy Shamel, http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/SLA-Name-Change-Can-the-Name-Convey-the-Value-57623.asp.)

Ruth Kneale asked the audience how many did and didn’t have librarian in their job titles—the result was about half and half. She is embedded as part of the engineering team at ATST. She says this is clearly where we need to be headed—to be part of the team. Another embedded corporate librarian is Jerry O’Connor-Fix, manager of strategic intelligence at Waters Corp. The company added a librarian to each product team—this increased awareness of the information center’s capabilities. The librarians developed individual information plans for the scientists on their teams—these have been extremely well received.

Tom Reamy’s consulting company uses librarians for his knowledge architecture projects. Knowledge architecture is an interdisciplinary field concerned with creating the infrastructure for the flow of knowledge throughout an organization. According to Tom, it’s library science + information architecture + cognitive science + history of ideas + ? It’s a bridge between KM and library science. It’s also a great avenue for librarians to expand their roles—to build on their core expertise.

Tom’s company, the KAPS Group, usually starts with a knowledge architecture audit. Knowledge architecture looks at 4 contexts of structure:

• Ideas – content structure
• People – company structure
• Organizational activities, business processes, events, etc
• Technology Layer – text analytics, taxonomy tools, etc

He described a case study where his team of several librarians worked with 2 librarians in a client company. He says they were essential to the project but needed to expand their skills.

Some of the lessons learned:

No single enterprise taxonomy – make it small and simple

Focus on user/usability (design for the novice and infrequent user)

There’s no right way to categorize – understand variations

Importance of using prototypes – measure of typicality

Focus on business activities – information behaviors

Learn key technologies, especially text analytics

Web 2.0 and folksonomies – “whatever the question, they are not the answer”

Paula J. Hane

ITI News Bureau Chief