Librarian by Day

For National Library Week we asked patrons what the library is to them. These are some of the responses so far, they go all around the pillar.

I also took individual pictures of them, go look at them, they’re awesome! You have to forgive me this is one of the last chances I’ll have to brag about all the awesome things MRRL does and I’m extra proud since this was my idea!

Some of my personal favorites

There is no way to say this other than to just come out and say it.

Effective May 18th I will be the Digital Branch Manager of the Chattahoochee Valley Regional Library System.  This is a new position they have created for the purpose of planning, building and managing the Digital Branch, its going to be a lot of fun (and hard work!)  I’m excited, nervous and about 20 other emotions right now, but most of all I’m really looking forward to it!

For those of you looking at your atlas CVRLS is in Columbus, Georgia, which means I will be spending the next couple of weeks packing my things and relocating.  

I’m in Minnesota this week teaching Reference in the Digital Age at multiple locations and Get Your Game On: Using Video Games as Outreach at one location.

So far Minnesota is beautiful and everyone it super nice!

I’ll be resuming your regularly scheduled and opinionated blog posts next week.

Aubri Keleman, Teen Services & Web Coordinator, Whatcom County Library System

Tao Gao, Live2Create Interactive

Aubri -

Rumba with Joomla

What is a cms and why is it wicked cool?  The webmaster doesn’t have to do anything

Pre-redesign

• collect stats
• review your brand
• collect photos – tell a story
• focus groups
• set explicit goals in priority order

redesign questions

• do staff and leadership know why a new website is needed
•  which cms is best for us
• what can we afford money vs time vs design
• how much staff time can we put into the redesign & upkeep;
• do you need to outsource or do you have the talent you need on staff
• how will decisions be made, who gets the final say
• who is the best for the website
• how will staff be involved in the redesign process
• what project management tool should we use – blogs and wikis, they used a wiki

 goal wc3 compliant

new page – www.wcls.org

results

• increased user feedback
• more content, more up to date content
• users spend more time on our site
• improved navigation
• w3c compliant
• flexibility

Problems

• you cant limit authors to just one page or section
• calendar
• migration

CM Tools: Drupal, Joomla, & Rumba

John Blyberg

Ryan Deschamps

Ryan
ModX
How not to have to use drupal
Cms in general
Why joomla
Why switch to ModX

Good content mngmt system should facilitate division of labor, support overall development, ensure best practices and standards
Halifax public library now in modx looked the same in joomla
Its not about the front end, its about the cockpit, ask long as the front end performs its about making the lives of your staff happy

Why they choose joomla
Number 1 in market share
Huge community of support
Templates
www.opensourcecms.com – demo of anything, can see how the back end looks and works

why they switched to ModX from Joomla
painful upgrade
started looking useful stuff – code etc, wanted to look at new services, joomla is not that great for adding unique
nice interface but doesn’t help the development of the site

ModX
Has fine grain user access, can restrict access to specific pages
Resources

What he does like
Still needs work
Needs more documentation
Some syntax knowledge required

Joomla really good for an intranet, wouldn’t recommend for a front end site,
community engagement is more important that community size
application framework

John
If youre not thinking about cms at this point you are doing yourself a really big disservice
Drupal – named open source cms of the year for the last 2 years
Not as easy as joomla – steep learning curve

How drupal handles content
Nodes – not a page, not a post
Blog post could be a node, drupal considers that content type

Content creation kit (CCK) – allows you to create new content types
Taxonomy system – drupa allows you to create your own classification system for your content types
Drupal allows you to structure sites so that content is on more than one page, on front page and on book groups page for example

Templating system – php standard, html with php tags and code
Sopac is completely template driven
If you don’t like how something looks you can make it look exactly how you want it to

api system api.drupal.org
hooks
drupal website is the place to start if youre interested in having drupal in your system

sopac was built on top of drupal because they were confident that drupal was a viable product
thesocialopac.net

questions
if you were starting with drupal now would you go with 6 or 7? Answer 7 hasn’t been officially released yet, so use 6
learning curve problems – some people have a problem with the taxonomy system, even John runs into things he doesn’t know and has to go to the site and look it up
moving from one system to another, are there tools to facilitate a move from joomla to drupal? Ryan – probably but the tools might not be that trustworthy, always be looking forward, what is the next upgrade, how difficult is the next upgrade John – migration is not easy, he advises against if possible

mentioned not hacking the core code, can you explain – John if you tweak code & drupal upgrades the file that you changed might have changed so you need to compare, very time consuming

modx has snippets, allows you to change code from back end with out breaking it

how easy to migrate from an existing site in php to one  of these tools?  Manually migrating your content,

if modx went away where would you go? Ryan – drupal

I promised some links to the people who were in my talk yesterday.

Library Learning 2.0 or 29 Things

Library Learning 2.1

Slides from my patron training classes are in my slideshare account

Social network profile management

Greg Schwartz
Michael Porter
Sarah Houghton-Jan
Amanda Clay Powers

Greg
Identity
Digital identity mapping – online interactions make identity much more complicated
Your next employer looking for your identity will do a google search
You do not own your online identity

Tip
-own your username
- if your name is unique and can grab everywhere use it, otherwise pick something
- checkusernames.com
- join the conversation , develop your identity by participation
- listen, pay attention to what other people are saying about you
- be authentic – your digital identity should be your real identity

Amanda Clay Powers
What are we doing here anyway
How managing identity online is like managing information
We know how to manage identity because we know how to manage information (really?)
Our place is to educate people about what they are doing
Peoples perception that librarians don’t know how to help them with their online interactions
Who else is in the position to coach people with this? Who else has the number of computers we do

Sarah
Being online as the library
Register for online sites with a generic email address, not the address of a specific staff member
Quick replies to users messages
Keep it open to everyone – let anyone being your friend, other than spammers

What not to do
Register with stranger usernames
Not replying
Outdated profile information
Slow or no replies
Institutional in tone

Under management and over management, over mgmnt is just as dangerous as under dangerous

Be personable – sarah got a gig via facebook
Checkusernames.com
Opened
Claimed
Ping.fm
Atomkeep

Michael
Libraryman is his online identity
Webjunction.org – community staff for library staff

Be fun, but not too fun
Things can be misinterpreted online
Share success stories

Audience participation
Question about dual identity –
greg Schwartz talked about keeping identity separate, that in being authentic those 2 lines start to blur
sarah – you don’t have control of how other people see your identity, she posted wedding photos thinking no one would find them, but within 4 hours they were located
Michael – its hard to control, you might be able to have a separate account somewhere, but not a separate identity, thinks as tools get refined we’ll see more levels of connections, more than just friends, family etc, we care about functionality, Flickr example – what if we could group friends and allow just certain groups of friends see specific photos
Amanda – might be a generational thing too

Not everything needs to be online

Greg – everything you ever do say whatever online may eventually be shown to everyone, you never know when it will become public

Library success wiki

Sarah – if its not personal its not effective even if it is an institutional site

Greg aggregate your life stream – people are not familiar with those tools on a mass scale

Sarah – integrate your profiles, put linkedin on flickr, etc, cross pollinate, include links to all the sites on your library website

Michael – It takes research and time to things well enough, you might have to let something slide to make something else work

Amanda – ppl are overwhelmed by information, Mississippi library 2.0 Summit – to talk about tools, whats working, how its working, you have to get ahead of the curve

Audience question – single woman, online interaction can be awkward, talking the other women near where she lives, she is more interested in connecting with other people for a purpose and not really share personal information as much, we might have personal differences, but we can collaborate online without bringing that in.
Do you really want all your colleagues to have access to all your past relationship information.