Archive | IL2015

Carol Doyle and Patrick Newell

The California map and aerial photo digitization needs assessment was described by Carol Doyle and Patrick Newell from the Fresno State University Library. People frequently want to find map sheets of their area of interest, and they often want aerial photos as well. Many libraries store their maps in large sets with indexes covering each one. It is hard to find a single map in a pile and harder to recognize a feature in a digitized map.  For aerial photos, it is necessary to see which library has photos from the flight where the photos were taken, find the index, and know where in the county the flight was to get to the right part of the index. Then one must identify the wanted area on the track of the flight. An example of a solution for multi-year retrieval is a collection at San Jose State that was processed with contentDM and has indexed photos with place names, but it is still a very intensive process to go through every single photo.

Fresno State has developed a map and aerial locator tool (MALT), in which one can move around on a map and pick a drawing tool or input a search option (address, etc.), then pick an area of interest. MALT search options include: image, thumbnail, and textual information. They are collaborating with other libraries and digitizing their map collections.

A meeting of people from California universities and state organizations who care about maps was recently held.  Before the meeting, a request for money was made to the California State Library and a survey was conducted. Here are the questions asked.

Mostly academic libraries attended the meeting. Both big and small collections were represented. Most organizations have a document ccordinator in charge of maps, and most collections depicted California; many are unique. Most of them are available to anybody for free.
A number of proposals were made to the State Library, including these:

• The State Library should commission a small working group of experts to develop and conduct a census of available map collections.
• It should create an online clearinghouse of organizations that have agreed not to pursue copyright claims (most people thought the maps are in the public domain, but some are copyrighted), champion the use of Creative Commons licenses, and clarify if takedown notices will be issued. Experts available for consultation on copyright should be identified.
• The State Library should create mechanisms for documenting and training librarians and agencies on best practices for digitization workflow, file management, and standards (only about half of the organizations currently follow standards).
• The library should fund mechanisms for access to digitization equipment.
• The State Library should identify, promote, and document digitization partners or other organizations that meet the bidding and outsourcing requirements of State entities.
• A standards-based digital hosting platform should be developed, accompanied by education on the preservation of photos and maps. The California Preservation Program (CPP) should target outreach to State agencies that may not be aware of these resources.
• The State Library should do research on coordination of efforts to organize low-cost long-term digital storage for the preservation of digital files.

The proposal has just been delivered to the State Librarian; funding priorities are to be set in December.

Dee Magnoni

Researchers in many organizations feel pressured by tasks that take time from doing research.  There are many “speed bumps” and distractions such as sitting on faculty committees, applying for grants, and administration.  Dee Magnoni, Research Library Director at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), described how LANL has built a “research carrot” to help the technical staff manage their jobs.  The benefits of the carrot include institutional vitality, recruiting and impact, and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. Researchers care about what’s in it for them (WIFM) and will use the tools if they can perceive the benefits of doing so.

The carrot includes systems in the following areas:

• Open Access (OA): Setting the stage and building benefits–what benefits can we build for researchers? A public-facing repository with researchers’ own pages was created. Using it, they can easily fill requests for reprints of their articles.
• Education: Exploring the stakeholders, creating an OA roadshow, policy creation (updated with OA and data policies)
• Tools: focus on research instead of bureaucracy. The repository went live: provides procedures review and release for public dissemination and linkks to external tools (DMP tool, ORCID, Kudos)
• The service landscape: research collections include science and technology lab reports, traditional reference works, document delivery, impact and metrics services, and digital library research.

Challenges: differences in research impacts for different fields, telling our story to the public (lots of research cannot be released). Personas were created to look at outcomes and develop cases. The hiberlink service is used to help with the link rot issue when content shifts over time.

Peter Morville

Peter Morville, President, Semantic Studios, and a well-known author, said that the information architecture has become more difficult than ever. Many things change by going through an initiative and then going back to the way things were. We need to go deeper and make lasting changes.

Morville’s Books

Morville presented some examples of his recent consulting work and used them to illustrate change and some of the resistance to it:

• He did a study of the Library of Congress’s website and compared it to Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA–a findability nightmare. The site was fragmented into multiple sites, so that users did not know which site to visit and for which purpose. They could not find what they needed from the home page. Most users did not come through the “front door” but entered via a search, and were confused by what they found. So most of them never used the library because its resources were not easily findable. Originally Morville’s report was not received well, but eventually, the realization grew that his recommendations were good. Governance and culture must be grappled with if we are to make meaningful change.
• The Harvard library created a first portal to give a consistent interface across its many web pages. It is an easy way for people to get started. Faceted navigation is a good model and provides a custom map to search results. The website must help people understand what they found. There is a need to explore designing for understanding people.
• Morville worked with a major database vendor which has many powerful features but is almost impossible to use, like this Swiss Army Knife.

The CEO wanted it made easy for the person on the street to use, but he was disappointed because it became too simple! We have created and celebrated complexity so it  is very hard to move toward simplicity even when we say we want to. (See The Simplicity Cycle by Dan Ward.) More features make things too confusing and complex.

The world can be organized into 5 major areas:

• Nature. There is more than meets the eye, and it is hard to change direction. Software is very resistant to change. There is risk in adopting simple methodologies. Sometimes failure has lasting and serious consequences. Planning, thinking, building, and doing are all parts of the same process.
  In designing and management of information systems, we need to understand the nature of information in systems. Keystones are important; remove them and the system collapses.
• Categories have value but problems too. Classification is dangerous, but not bad. We need to go deeper: categories are the cornerstones of cognition and culture. Most of our categories are fuzzy. Sometimes we must choose what we prefer, but not always. We use radio buttons when check boxes or sliders would better reveal the truth.
• Connections: Originally, hyperlinks connected pages to make websites. Now we create paths and places. The connections we make may change our minds. We need to start mapping connections in time as well as space. The system always kicks back at you. Information architecture has changed: we have learned that we must look more closely and deeply at the surrounding context. We must practice ethnography on both our users and stakeholders.
• Culture surrounds us but is nearly invisible. We can learn a lot but not everything from culture, so we must go deeper into underlying assumptions. Map our culture to understand what is happening. We are reasonably open to changing our actions and behaviors based on feedback, but we are resistant to changing our beliefs. Our society has a dangerous predisposition to just doing something. We now have massive amounts of information, but are we making better decisions as a result of it?
• Limits: We are living beyond our limits and are beginning to feel the consequences. Can we change course? We need to make the invisible visible: updating a library website is an opportunity to map the whole ecosystem. Develop maps of how people do research. Validate the library as publisher: get research out to the world.

Information architects use nodes and links to create environments for understanding. See things differently and find a new potential. We should aspire to places that can be used by many people in many places over time.

The library is an act of inspiration architecture and a keystone of culture.  It is not just about books or not just about information but serves as a bridge between physical and digital, between communities and individuals. It is important because it is connected in many ways.