theanalogdivide » instruction

IOLUG 2009: Social Library is People!

Toby — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:47:05 +0000

I’m presenting at the Indiana Online Users Group fall symposium “Hot or Not: Managing Digital Identity.” It’s a privilege to have been invited to speak about creating a unique identity for your organization, in a presentation I’m calling “Social Library is People!”

Because it’s true. Like Soylent Green, it’s the individuals within the institution that make it great. A big part of my job is harnessing these online resources to bring that same level of personality online. I’m hoping these slides serve as an crash course in many of the tricks of the trade.

Be sure to click on the links in the presentation for other relevant resources. And please share your strategies for organizational identity management in the comments.

ALA 2009: Pre-Post-Conference Wrap-up

Toby — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:15:53 +0000

What an exhausting, inspiring, educational, and productive four days. It’s going to take a little bit to process my notes on everything and come to some conclusions. I do know I’ve got some things to do back at the old POW. In the meantime, I had to share this, because it cements my feelings about what we’re trying to do in this profession, on the web and otherwise:

You know who you are.

Thanks for a great conference, those of you I met in-person finally, and those I got to talk to on the datastream. Let’s do what we can to continue the conversation, and make great things happen.

Presentation: Library Gaming for Adults

Toby — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:45:05 +0000

Presented at the Reaching Forward conference, May 1st 2009. Many thanks to all who attended, and to everyone on the conference planning committee for inviting me to participate.

In the interest of keeping things paper-free, I’ve posted the handout here. Please right-click save-as to enjoy.

CIL Morning Session: Website Redesign Pitfalls

Toby — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:15:26 +0000

“Cut-and-paste should die, probably.”

-Jeff Wisniewski

When is the right time to re-do your website? Is the “dramatic overhaul” method actually detrimental to your site’s usability? Presenter Jeff Wisniewski seems to think so. Take a look at an overview of some of the most common mistakes made by library websites and web designers. It’s important to pay close attention to what gives your site value, so as not to harm the goodwill your design has already made.

I think Wisniewski makes a great point to treat the site evaluation and redesign process as an organic, transparent activity, making sure to include stakeholders both on staff and in the user base. Doing so makes sure that you haven’t overlooked anything and builds support in the long run.

Raw notes after the jump.

Website Redesign Pitfalls

Jeff Wisniewski

Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh

has never worked on a submarine

Redesigning your website? These are the things you don’t. want. to. do.

Addressing the concept of redesign in general

Don’t look at it in the form of major disruptive redesigns every few years

Evolve/retune/

You may ask yourself: Do you really need a redesign?

Bad reasons:

“It’s been a few years”

“The boss says I have to”

“I’m bored with the site”

Good reasons:

Navigation is dysfunctional

Site doesn’t scale

Site is difficult to update

Code is too slick

Poor usability

Not performing based on goals/objectives

Redevelop v. redesign

Rejigger navigation under the hood w/o redoing front end

“Cosmetic surgery” – preserve navigation, but reskin

Prime example: Amazon 10 years ago v. Amazon now – very similar in appearance

What needs to be fixed in our website?

- island nature of features (annotations, booklists, resource guides)
- Focus on findability over anything else
- Action-oriented resources, over resource lists

Jaret M. Spool – “The Quiet Death of the Major Re-Launch”

Redesign and the 5 Stages of User Grief

Why did you change the site? It was fine as it was.
This site is useless. What were you thinking?
Just go back to one feature and we’ll be fine
I don’t know what I’m going to do with the site like this.
Okay. Fine. I don’t like, but I guess I can use it.

So why do we do this? Why do we put ourselves (and our users) through this issue every so often?

“We’re gonna fix this, but we’re waiting for the redesign.”
“We’re aware of this. It’s a known issue.” (Why build it all at once?)

Inverse relationship of user/designer satisfaction:

The longer a user has to get familiar with a site, the fonder they grow.

The longer a designer has to look at their site, the more dissatisfied they grow.

PITFALL: Must provide enough time for people to do this. Use this to determine what’s needed for the redesign.

“Spend your money where the water is”

Build the redesign around most commonly used features

Be mindful of Google PageRank

PITFALL: Proceeding w/o consensus – build buyin where necessary.

Avoid death by committee, natch

Small groups

PITFALL: Being the expert

Designing to satisfy librarians, rather than end-users

(These – surprisingly enough – don’t always mesh)

Aquabrowser as main example of this

Is a traditional page-based site the proper route?

Don’t let the design monopolize your time

bring the content/services to the forefront

(see the templates used on the slides)

Don’t just look at other library sites

Remember: your site isn’t the only place people spend their time

Remember the SMART goal-making process

example: Use wiki to reduce the amount of time content takes to go live on a site from 6 days to 1 day.

PITFALL: Failing to communicate enough

Be transparent with redesign changes

Open up the process and treat it as a conversation

ex: Cook Library website redesign blog

PITFALL: Communicating too much

Example: Queens Library

connecting people with materials is a high priority

Spend time money and effort

remarkable content

engagement tools

user testing

“Cut and paste should die, probably”

Invest time for rewriting content

SEO a priority

Title and heading tags are your friends

Submit sitemap to google (Does Google have a mobile directory)

Finding decent design is easy; creating decent content is harder

PITFALL: Moving/eliminating content that’s being used

Take time to update analytics definitions

Start with a fresh content strategy

Develop a maintenance strategy

Slides posted at CIL site

Introducing SkokieVotes!

Toby — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:01:14 +0000

With election fever ramping up in my area (and all over the country), MPOW thought it would be useful to put together a directory of election resources. With so much content out there, and even more being added by the minute, I realized that it’s important to have a page that can offer both static pages as well as self-updating content. The result of our efforts is SkokieVotes, which you can see here:

After looking at a number of content aggregators, I finally went with Netvibes, due to its ease of use and aesthetically pleasing mode of presentation. I’ve been using the service as a feed aggregator for a little over a year, and it simply “works” for me as a more visually-oriented person. I like being able to take in a lot of information at a glance, and Netvibes gives the user the freedom to read stories in a specific feed as one would with a reader like Google’s or Bloglines. Individuals can also export specific items to their own reader/blog/aggregator.

I’m also a fan of their static HTML and link widgets, which enabled me to provide links to static pages. These included sites like the Village’s site and the County Clerk’s Office. While lacking in dynamic content, their value to a potential voter is unmistakable. I’m glad it allows me the ability to present both.

Give the site a look-see and let me know what you think. I’m still adding information on the local races, but the lion’s share of the content is up and running.

New Screencast: Using the Magazine and Newspaper Locator

Toby — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:47:26 +0000

MPOW got me a shiny new copy of Camtasia 5, and I’ve been using it to put together some snazzy instructional videos. Here’s my latest, addressing our Magazine and Newspaper Locator:

Using the Magazine and Newspaper Locator at Skokie Public Library from Skokie Public Library on Vimeo.

If you visit the archive of past screencasts, you’ll notice I’ve made an effort to make this video a little more “punchy” than the previous efforts. I’ve come around on keeping things short and sweet. Even 5 minutes might be pushing things here. You may also notice the attempts at levity, too. Maybe it’s too much time spent watching The Word on the Colbert Report, but there’s something to be said for the juxtaposition of words and static pictures.

At any rate, I hope to be cranking out more of these as time goes by. Enjoy!

Happy RSS Day!

theanalogdivide — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:00:08 +0000

RSS in Plain English

On the Nature of Things: An Introduction to Library 2.0

theanalogdivide — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:09:16 +0000

I had the distinct pleasure to visit the Glen Ellyn Public Library last Friday to speak about social software during their Staff in-service day. They just began their own Learning 2.0 program, so it was a great opportunity to share the enthusiasm we had at MPOW.

Presentation slides are here. If anyone from Google Docs is reading this, I’d like to reiterate my request to allow users to designate custom colors for link text. This blue just doesn’t cut it with a dark background.

Also, if you can give us an idea as to when you plan to allow YouTube embeds, I think you’d make a lot of people happy, kthxbye.

Adventures in Screencasting

theanalogdivide — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:35:28 +0000

We recently downloaded Camtasia at MPOW, and I’ve been teaching myself to create screencasts. This is my first attempt, on using online resources to find obituaries online. While I did feel slightly morbid discussing the topic, it is a question that we get asked all the time. So far, the software’s been pretty intuitive to learn, and I look forward to getting the bugs out. Hopefully I can also recall my former radio voice.

So here goes nothing. Let me know what you think.

Click here to view the embedded video.