Lori’s Alliance Summer Meeting Report

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Monday night – 10:26pm

SO that flat tire in the middle of I-205 really sucked. Having ODOT incident response pull up right behind us and change the tire did NOT suck at all.  How lucky am I?  I guess that travelling mercies are a real thing.  Here is my donut.  DO NOT MOCK IT.  I think it’s cute.  I was, of course, all prepared to change that f&*%@r myself should the need arise.

IMG_1818But the ride with Dan (we all know not to call him Discovery Dan, right?  RIGHT?) was really good.  A great chance to get to know him and he gets my official cool dude stamp of approval.

I finally practiced my presentation tonight, and guess what!  It’s 10 minutes too short, so tomorrow I’m going to attempt something pretty dangerous.  As long as there is a stable internet connection, I”m going to try to do some live edits in front of the studio audience.  I promise not to break anything.  Much.  Please wish me luck.  I’m really nervous.  The flat tire just means all the bad luck is out of the way.  

In other news, the motor pool guy (I think his name was Justin) gave me a disposable camera and told me to take 5 photos with it on this trip.  He’s using them for a cool montage of some kind.  I can’t wait to figure out what to photograph!

Okay – off to bed.  I need my beauty rest for the big show tomorrow.

 

Tuesday morning – 8:52am

A nice breakfast with Dan, Dana Bostrom (the new Alliance president) and her sister.  Thought it was the continental breakfast but no – $12 buffet.  Dan tried to warn me but, as usual, I failed to listen.  Dana gave us a ride to Warner Pacific which is really really small but very beautiful.  Reported to the chapel to load my presentation on the laptop we’ll be using and wallah – I will presenting from the pulpit this morning!

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Summit 101 – Meghan Williams @ WWU, Shanel Parette @ Willamette

Alliance Website – very large and can be confusing, but a huge resource

Rota 1:1 ratio – if you borrow one, you lend one.  Sometimes the rota gets out of whack and people borrow more than they lend.  The rota gets adjusted every 6 months to try to keep that balance.

Borrowing and lending demonstration – this is really cool – they’re actually going to do a full life-cycle of a request LIVE.

Brief discussion of the difference between available and requestable – that a patron may not actually be able to get it even if it shows available because it may be in a special location – archives, reserves, ref, etc.  

Lending library side – start with printing slips and send it to the summit print server.  Go to the print server and print your paging slip.  Pull the item from the stacks. Go to “Shipping items” and don’t use “Scan In Items” if at all possible.  Make sure you have chosen the correct long loan or short loan, and type in your barcode. If successful, the item will show “Shipped Physically” when you’re done.  Attach the strap or sticker to the book, put the paging slip in the front of the book and get it into a summit courier bag.

Borrowing library side – open the courier bag and go to “Receiving Items” to type in the barcode.  Double check that the location is correct (long loan vs. short loan), also check for damage and note it on the strap or sticker if present.  You can also add a fulfillment note for a pop up about the damage (I wish our summit folks would start doing this! – they’re here so maybe they will!). Send the item to the hold shelf and let it check out.

When book comes back – if damaged and no note of PRIOR damage, use the pink damaged item flag.  If item returned at wrong location, use the green return slip to make sure the item gets checked in at the location it was loaned from.  Just check the item in otherwise, cross off your band, and ship it back to the owning library.

Lending library side – use “Scan in items” to finish the process, then off to re-shelving.

Use the facets in the borrowing and lending requests to see what’s outstanding and identify potentially stuck or problematic requests.

Okay, a little disappointed – I apparently know more about Summit than I thought I did.  While entertaining, I didn’t get a lot of new info on this one.  The main thing Iwould say is helpful is the continual reminder to check before you scan. Check condition, check who it goes to, check long vs. short loan, check volumes, call or email each other with questions instead of assuming.  Assumptions can supply the wrong item and delay your patron’s requests.

Queue Maintenance – Heidi Nance UW, David Ketchum UO, and Meghan Williams WWU

Borrowing and lending request statuses and when to check them: use Jesse’s (UI) document from the Alliance website – https://www.orbiscascade.org/discovery-delivery – they are the first 2 documents under the workflow section

ONLY resource sharing staff should do queue maintenance – if you have too many people doing the maintenance it becomes unmanageable.

Use a web task list to help assign specific tasks to people -AND designate backups (she recommends TODOist).  Easy to drag tasks between people to cover vacations and etc, as long as people have been cross trained on the basics.

Add notes to the notes field in requests – they are searchable!

Queues can also be exported to excel to allow a more organised and sortable list.

Check the “Assigned to Others” and “Assigned to Me” lists – stuff can be hiding that you don’t know is there!  (this is also true in course reserves)

This is kind of funny – David Ketchum is spending the majority of his time presenting explaining why Jesse’s list of “when to check what” is wrong! I’ve got to ask Cheryl about him when we see her on Friday.  I’m excited to see the Bemi!  Ray is always such a great mediator – “Every library has different volume, different staffing and different time tables”

Troubleshooting – Jesse Thomas UI, Kate Cabe WWU

This should be a really good session because both of these people are super smart.

3 basic problem causes: System errors, configuration errors and user/workflow errors.  Focusing on configuration and its impacts on workflow.

Configuration: Alliance, Locally with Alliance standards, truly local config

  1. Rota templates: manually changed every 6 months to maintain the 1:1 average.  You won’t see your own library in your rota list.  Every request right now goes to PSU first!
  2. Rota assignment rules: you will only need an institution rule list if you’ve integrated ILLiad.
  3. Locate Profiles: for both borrowing and lending.  Borrowing isn’t editable (set up at the Alliance level).  Locate is centered around title, ISBN/ISSN and OCLC number.
  4. Sending Borrowing Request Rules – keeps things from getting stuck in “ready to be sent” and is set up just like Rota assignment rules.  If you have ILLiad configured, you have to have institution rule for that AND Summit3, otherwise all requests will go to ILLiad.

Locally:

  1. Your resource sharing library can be chosen (we picked Valley), default location can be set (Long or Short loan), can reject requests when no available/requestable.
  2. Partners (was done for us by Ex Libris) – make sure barcodes and and requester information are shared!  If not, this can cause problems.
  3. Temp Item Creation – long due dates are 67 days, short due dates are 25 days.  If days until due date are >30, it assigns LONG, if not, it assigns SHORT
  4. Library level fulfillment rules – these should be your only library-level rules.

Troubleshooting a bad request starts by locating the request (don’t forget to look in the assigned to me/others tabs for lending, or the Active/Completed/All.  Once found, the audit trail may come in handy.  It details the actual steps taken at both the borrowing and lending institution, as well as the messages that were sent between the partners.

Items shipped with incorrect short or long loan location – you can’t fix these.  Just let it go for that length of time.

COMMUNICATE!  Even if we can’t fix it, at least we can all be on the lookout when something goes amiss.

Summit Visiting Patron – Dawn Lowe OrTech

YAY! I really want to get this to work correctly.  User type ID – still gets checked on the Alliance website.  We need to make sure they are current, and we need to know if they student staff or faculty.  Go to patron services and register new user.  Pick the correct user group Summit Visiting or whatever we have set up.  Do a Resource Sharing Library (that should be Valley, I think) or they won’t be able to request through Summit.  They still log in as a community user (convenience card).

I guess I’m still missing something as far as visibility of the request summit button.  I really need to sit down and figure out how to make this work! Will do a test patron to see what’s going on.

Courier 101 – Elizabeth Duell and Ray Henry, Alliance

I have to admit I won’t be listening closely to this one because my presentation is next!

So far just talking about shipping supplies.  And a lengthy argument over when to use the gray bags and when to use the brown bags.  This is apparently a very important thing.  Who’d’a’thought!

TOUs and FUs – Chelle Batchellor UW and Bill Kelm Willamette

This presentation is all about deduplicating the policies, TOUs and FUs and making sure that you have a cleaner, easier set up.  Main point is not to build more infrastructure than you need.  

Advanced Policies – Generic policy won’t have a delete button in most cases.  If Institution is the owner, you usually can delete it.  Be sure to use the “Show related terms of use” to see if the policy is actually useful.  If it is not, remove it (you have to unhook it from the TOU first).  You can also switch it to the default policy (which is also generally undesirable).  Delete those that aren’t attached to TOUs, adjust ones that are redundant and then delete.

Terms of Use – again, Alma won’t let you delete something that’s in use so you’ll have to adjust things before deleting. Make your default TOU for each fulfillment unit and for each type (loan, request, etc) the MAIN rule – you can remove a lot of TOUs this way.

Fulfillment Units – start HERE! You can disable fulfillment rules you don’t think matter instead of deleting them. Give it a week or 2 as a test to see if it makes something not work. Make a concrete plan of how you want it to be structured now that you understand how the parts work together. We built our TOUs, FUs and policies before we understood what we were working with.  It’s time to look again with the fuller understanding and do a strategic change.

I really seriously want to do this as well.  I think it’s a big enough process that I’d like to have a planning team for it.  Maybe we can discuss this idea at the next circ meeting?

Alma and ILLiad Integration – Kun Lin and Julie Carter – Whitman

Patrons should not have to know the difference between Summit and ILL – AMEN and HALLELUJAH!  All requests will use the same form, all items will show up in the Alma account. Temp items in Alma just like for Summit, auto delete on return.

Lending – in ILLiad, process and add the barcode to the Ref Num field (use the Primo AddOn) – leads to a primo search where you can copy and paste the barcode.  NCIP sent to Alma, creates the request and moves item to a temp location for ILLprocess so it shows as unavailable.

Borrowing – Set up ILLiad as the patron of last resort (I think we’ve already done this but not sure). Crap – I got distracted and missed a whole bunch of the directions!  But I got a very nice compliment on my 2 sessions and I feel so good about it all now! Hopefully the powerpoints will be made available.  Sorry!  You can’t use lending library due dates.  Match your 6 days, 6 weeks from Summit.  Your patrons are used to that anyway.  Notices need to be customized, patron accounts need to be loaded in ILL, time delivery expectations are a little longer for some ILL so it can confuse patrons.  Plan for stats ahead of time.  How will you designate ILL vs. Summit for stats?

If you set up a reading room for the resource sharing library/circ desk you can also do the in-house use only items very smoothly.

 

Wednesday morning, 9:09am

Plenary session – Faye introducing the new incoming chair (Lynn Baird) and the new Alliance President (Dana Bostrum).  Introduction of the new board members and an overview of 2016 in the Alliance.  52 groups and teams, over 200 people involved in these groups and more than 40 playing more than 1 role.  Very impressive level of involvement and dedication. (There’s someone on the assessment team named Kate Cate!  That’s so awesome! Sorry….)

Collaborative Workforce Team outlined how our work together can balance out the load on individual institutions.  Content Creation & Dissemination Team got an LSTA grant this year!  YAY!  Grant money is really hard to get.

2017 – focus on evaluating the Shared ILS and work processes, start a Courier RFP process to see if Senvoy is still our best option, new strategic plan prep focusing on measurable goals.

Course Reserves and Beyond – Joanna Baily WWU, Mary Van Court & Stephen Weber UW

This session is going to focus on the service of reserves, not necessarily the nuts and bolts of Alma.  In Primo – the facets on the sides DO NOT include the course you searched, they are a narrowing or expansion of the search you preformed.  Facets are limited to content of 40 matches.

UW student directed reserves requests – used just as they would for instructor requests. Purchasing 30-40 items a quarter. PSU is purchasing for high volume courses (100 or more enrollment) without need for student requests – getting data from admissions, filling for the top 100 classes.  This is exactly what I had suggested with my ploy to get ASOSU to give us a grant or funding.  PPR (patron purchase request) adapted for Course Reserves – not yet but sounds like it could work except for the materials type being limited to book or journal.

WWU – concierge model, course reserves delivered through Canvas in a homegrown system.  Purchases are faculty driven. Course reserves became its own department, instead of being part of circulation.  Only using Alma for the temp location of reserves and the shortened loan periods – not using the course reading lists, course reserve tab in Primo and etc.  Running 2 systems, but good feedback and a 10% increase in submissions from faculty.  This feels like they are just doing double work to avoid using Alma instead of learning how to use Alma and adapt it to what they need.  It’s kind of like they’ve just given up on learning/using the system.  This is not a direction I would like to see us go – I’d much rather have us learn to use and adapt.

I might feel differently if we were doing eReserves and streaming and storage were a problem.

There library will cover the costs for copyright permissions when necessary – but costs haven’t been very high.  

Shelf Report Tool Lightning Talk – Kate Cabe

Excited to see if they have solved the call number range problem.  They have moved their ref collection fairly regularly and need to use the tool to fix inventory problems.

DANG- She just said “Range still isn’t working.” Fix for quarter 4 this year.  BLAH!!!

Set tool – but we know how to do that already!  Scan the barcodes you want to inventory, create set of the location you’re working with, add the set you created.

Alma APIs – Jeremy McWilliams L&C, Linda Akers LCC, Bill Kelm Willamette

API (application programming interface) – a back door designed to allow others to introduce code and mods. Get, Update, Post, Delete, Put or Read. The Ex Libris Developers Network has a huge amount of information.  Keys and code for you to use.  Create an application.  “I Want Hours” choose configuration API.  If it’s designed to make a change be sure to try it on a sandbox instead of production.  Get your results and then “get some code” for a sample to take with you and use to develop further.

Analytics API can get published analytics report – use it for new books, get a fund code report for your librarians, improve data visualization.  It doesn’t work the first time you try it. It is delayed so try it again!  It will work.

COCC is using the Bibs API to display study room availability.  Kelly – who is our person with Trey gone? Could this be useful to us?

Config API can be used to display hours as in the example in the first paragraph.  Can run any manual job programmatically or on a cron setting.  Also can be used with MD Import to load records for an import file.  David – Is this what you’re doing with the serials?

I need to learn more about this in all my spare time.

Courses API is super slow but can be used to allow faculty to place items on reserve from Primo GES links, can make a completely different staff input front-end, etc.

Task lists can let you update and view borrowing and lending requests.

Users API can be used for loading patrons, can also use it show ILL loans on the Primo display! Could also create your own DIY self-check machine with raspberry Pi….

Using it without a server is difficult.  YOu could set up a local machine to run PHP or another language

Linda Akers – Alma Analytics API for a browse-able interface for new books, picture books, on display, and other specialty collections.  Wow – their browse new books is BEAUTIFUL!!  **is Laurel Kristick still in charge of our new books page?**

Start by getting the key from the developer network, create the analytic report – be sure to include ISBN so you can pull in the google book covers!, Construct your URL – get the path from analytics location and add the shared location (see the powerpoint when we get it!), write code (PHP most likely), read the XML and pull the parts you want and write each title to the webpage.  It is SLOW and times out.  Not ALL fields can be queried, so not all info can be displayed.  Seasons numbers and multiple disc sets are hard.

Bill Kelm – how Willamette uses APIs – patron batch deletes, YBP acquisitions, WEST Holdings

Delete sheet – this kind of duplicates what April and I just created, but we’re just using Excel and Alma functions to achieve the same results.

The other items from Bill’s list are outside Circ’s responsibility, but his know-how is pretty useful so we could probably use them for a training tool!

No-PDS Authentication – Nathan Mealy

Patron Directory Services (it’s that 3 option authentication page we use).  Letting Primo decide and authenticate each patron.  Supports Shibb, LDAP, ALma, CAS

Parallel authentication profiles – provides 2 options to your user (Campus or community)

Cascading profiles (only works for Alma and LDAP) – if LDAP doesn’t work, it hops to Alma to double check without the user knowing.

Silent or auto login – single sign on through shib transfers to Primo.

Why? resolves known issue with quoted searches, local control of sign-in page and options, removes a potential point of failure, integrates well with the new Primo UI

If you use Shib – there’s not a single reason not to use this.

Implementation steps

  1. multiple profiles – campus and community patrons
  2. create a new profil in the authentication config wizard
  3. Choose shib (SAML) and alma (the Alma one is easy with no choices or inputs), set one as primary and one as secondary (Download Metadata for the shib one – this is the certificate that you supply to your Shib admin for the conversation)
  4. deploy
  5. change lables in the code tables – auth1, auth 2, error messages, submit and cancel buttons and etc.

Sounds really easy BUT we’ve had auth problems before so be careful! Can we test in a sandbox?

Dinner at the Slide Inn with the DD Team

There were creepy pictures, old clocks and this group of weirdos.

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Beth’s ALA 2016 Summary

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flying

Window views: from Portland, to Phoenix, to Orlando!

atlas rocker

…got to see an rocket launch from my Aunts porch!

After taking vacation on the front end to see family….

ocean

West coast beaches are beautiful but you can SWIN in the Atlantic!

…I headed friday to ALA in Orlando!  As I have been rotating off many of commitments and committees this past year, it was nice to wrap up many things and enjoy ALA networking with new and old friends.  My main focus this year was seeing the ALA Sustainability Round Table (of which I was a founding member & published an article on) finally have a real presence at ALA. Check out these   to hear more and read about two of the sessions SustainRT hosted in American Libraries Magazine:

Carribean Libs at ALAAlso, a panel of Caribbean Librarians spoke about The National Library of Aruba: Promoting, Enhancing and Embracing Green Education  0701161555

Did you notice the name badges had no plastic sleeve, thank  SustainRT folks for pushing back on that!

atwood

Margaret Atwood was hilarious  – so witty – I found myself laughing out loud. I cant wait to read her book this fall as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project!

browns posters

I also got to see my former colleagues from UNCG as we celebrated the much deserved award to one of my favorite folks at UNCG Brown Biggers as LJ’s Paralibrarian of the Year.

I enjoyed small group discussion at the Heads of Public Service DG meet up where we discussed space allocation and staffing with no miraculous answers but nice to connect with others in similar roles.  The  ACRL ULS Taking Our Seat at the Table: How Academic Librarians Can Help Shape the Future of Higher Education was a little disappointing in content  – hmm or maybe we are already doing many of the things discussed – though I did hear some large libraries say they are stopping their Gov Docs collecting (!), and much on affordable textbook initiatives. I did really like this slide quizzing us on what we should know/be able to answer about our schools.

2 min quiz on your school

and this humorous one on how to earn your seat at the table!

earn a seat at the table how

 

 

Destination Krakow, Poland

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My first trip to Eastern Europe led me to the beautiful city of Krakow, Poland. Dianna Fisher, the20160416_102628 director of Open Oregon State, and I were presenting on the OSU Open Textbook Initiative at Open Education Global 2016. OSU is a really new member of Open Education Consortium, the global network for open education.  Attendees from all over the world were in attendance.  Most U.S. participants are from community colleges since in our country they are at the forefront of open education adoption. This is not a library conference so there weren’t a lot of us in attendance.  That said, it is clear that faculty outside libraries are looking to academic librarians to be partners.

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AGH Library interior

The host institution is AGH University of Science and Technology, obviously a technical university, established in 1913.  Other campus libraries always interest me so I did peek into AGH’s but you’d have to have an ID to get much further into the building.

Conference Highlights:

  • All the plenary panels were excellent; these sessions demonstrated not only the global nature of the OE movement but the huge successes across Europe. Both the opening and closing panels were strong. The opening keynote panel on “Opening Up Poland” had reps from across government, higher education and IT; the closing keynote featured Jarosław Lipszyc, the President of the Modern Poland Foundation—quite a charismatic guy.
  • Learning about the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), the first open and distant learning institution in the West African region;
  • A lab/workshop on advocating for open education through the Open Government Partnership;
  • Caleb Green’s report on the Creative Commons 2016-2020 Strategy and their 2015 annual report; this is a session that I could likely expect to hear in the states but I don’t get to the more focused conferences as I often as I once did.
  • Another terrific lab/workshop on the Open Research Agenda—this was not on how to “open up” research but where the research energy investigating OE issues ought to be focused. It occurs to me that this is a pretty good approach to leveraging your efforts and FTE so you aren’t spending time investigating dead ends.

Dianna Fisher and I had good attendance at our session (about 20-25 in attendance); we were joined by a couple of other presenters. After our presentation, someone came up to Dianna and told her he liked our presentation. This person also told her that we weren’t nearly as pompous as most Americans. At some point, I hope to put our presentation in ScholarsArchive.

Other Trip Highlights

Krakow as a destination exceeded my expectations. Compared to other places I’ve visited in Europe, it is quite inexpensive. My partner and I rented a great 1-bedroom apartment for about $75 a day. Polish cuisine is wonderful and a meal that would cost you $50 in Portland is about $25. Of course, I am not afraid to try new tastes:  delicious soups: borscht (beet soup), horseradish soup, sour rye; pierogi or filled dumplings; fried lard with fresh baked bread. Bagels originated in Poland and you can find them for sale all over the city. Even the conference food was outstanding. The opening conference reception offered a feast with various Polish dishes and we were entertained by a young Polish folk dance group.

My sightseeing included:

  • Rynek Glowny or Grand Square, the main square in Krakow with loads of activity;

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    Rynek Glowny at night

  • St. Mary’s Basilica, the location where a trumpeter plays five-notes from a Polish anthem from the church tower;
  • Kazmierz or the Jewish District where thousands of Krakow’s Jews lived before their forced move by the Nazis just a bit south across the Vistula River to Podgórze;
  • Podgórze, which became known as the Jewish ghetto, is the location of Schindler’s Factory; we also visited the exhibits here made famous in the Spielberg movie Schindler’s List.
  • A guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the concentration camps located about an hour from Krakow.   I am not sorry I did the tour though I am not sure I need to expose myself to another one in my lifetime. Both my partner and I agreed that going with a guide was the best option. I am not sure how we would have gotten through the tour without the guide pushing us along.  Scenes below include belongings of the camp’s victims like shoes and dinnerware.
  • Wieliczka Salt Mine which is actually pretty close to Krakow. The mine features lots of statutes and chapels carved out of rock salt by the miners themselves. This mine and its sister mine as well as Auschwitz-Birkenau are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
  • Wawel Castle–the amazing residence for Polish kings for centuries; it’s difficult to photograph because it encompasses multiple structures (cathedral, residence, state rooms), courtyards, gardens.
  • Nowa Huta, a suburb of Krakow which the Soviets planned after they occupied Poland in the post WW2 era. Nowa Huta was planned with the idea that folks from surrounding rural areas would move there to work in the steelworks. Given the Communists’ dismissal of organized religion, they did not plan for building churches. This was apparently a critical mistake and the local workers’ push for churches was a significant underpinning of the Solidarity movement. Karol Wojtyla, whom we know best as Pope John Paul II, was then archbishop in Krakow, and he was a big supporter of the trade union as well.

Richard Sapon-White had suggested I read A Long, Long Time Ago, and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka.  I am glad I took him up on this suggestion.  Often in my travels, I endeavor to read a book set in the location where I am headed. Much of Pasulka’s novel is set in Krakow right after the communist regime has fallen. There is a parallel and interlinked narrative about a young couple set in the inter-war years leading up to WW2 and through the period just after the Nazi occupation of Poland. Pasulka really brings the city to life. I would recommend this book even if you aren’t planning a trip to Poland anytime soon. Since I am a fast reader, I also read a short book on a black German woman who discovered that her grandfather was the commandment overseeing Podgorze. He was the evil sadistic character Amon Goeth that Ralph Fiennes portrayed in Schindler’s List. The book is My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege. Teege’s book was an interesting look at how descendants of Nazi war criminals have dealt with their ancestors’ horrific crimes against humanity. Since I’ve been home I have also read a terrific short young adult novel, Anna and the Swallow Man.  Highly recommended.

OLA debrief….

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A few of us met to share what we learned at OLA and ideas on what we might be able to apply here:

Library of Things Lightning Talks:  Giveaway boxes – seeing libraries as a cultural center. What people need and what people want along with academic mission  EX: seed library, partner with food pantry; tool lending library.  Issues: staff problem to maintain and lack of space.  Ideas:  do we have to be the keepers?  facilitate where to go to get these types of things? like a libguide?  OR could be have a spinning rack to display but store them elsewhere.
Follow Up???? 

Better connection with public library and Valley library? a think session between the two entities? when they get a new adult services manager we should connect. Getting public library card applications in our library so students can get cards to access resources?
Follow up: Maybe Beth should be the liaison to this new adult services manager? 

“doing more with less” marketing in libraries. what do we want the users to get from the libraries rather then everything that is overwhelming to them.
Follow Up: spotlight feature on website needed, to highlight events/items/info – is this happening? Beth/Uta will ask Mike 

The Edge Tools – assessing & measuring your technology needs and usage; free for basic set; ts for public libraries from Gates foundation but can our land grant mission help us get access?
Follow Up:  brooke/lori will follow up on possibilities of getting access to this 

Other good sessions:

  • Curiosity Session – people loved it and would love to see it again. 
  • Auto ethnography Session  -telling your own story; approaches to research; your story; gather a wide collection of stories; self assessing reactions to an event, content, etc. emotional intelligence based. Beth still doesn’t quite get this 🙂 
  • OR Readers Choice Awards Books  https://oregonreaderschoiceaward.wordpress.com/  Ideas: maybe kelly could do book talks like this? How about a poetry slam on 4th floor rotunda once a month/quarter? maybe talk to Marty about book talks for Press Books?  Follow up:  Korey will contact Marty about this idea

Designing For Digital 2016 Conference (Austin, TX)

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Screen Shot 2016-04-13 at 9.19.07 AM

Opening Keynote: Jesse James Garrett  

What do you want people to say about your product? “Can’t live without it”

Picture a triangle: Tech is the base but features are the next layer to consider (ex, first word processor “word star,” then word with all toolbars turned on,  but that overwhelms users with too much). Experience sits at the top of the triangle.  1984 Steve jobs quote: “When you start looking at a problem, it seems really simple—because you don’t understand its complexity. And your solutions are way too oversimplified, and they don’t work. Then you get into the problem and you see it’s really complicated. And you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep going and find the key underlying principle of the problem and sort of come full circle with a beautiful, elegant solution that works.” 

Key concepts:

  • Start w the customer experience and work backwards
  • Human engagement key
  • Products are people too (ex, people give names to their cars!)
  • Use repeatedly, recommend to a friend, would buy again
  • Experiences with products build relationships (and create loyalty)

My presentation:  Ask Me! A Mobile Concierge Station as a Library Wayfinding Solution

photo by Rachel V of Beth presenting

Beth, using her hands too much as usual

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/filarwilliams/ask-me-a-mobile-concierge-station-as-a-library-wayfinding-solution

Q/A/suggestions:

  • Consider taking it around campus
  • Try using it on other floors
  • Using for other events
  • Try working with web folks to determine if we can make changes there as well
  • Hire students just to do this, where a vest, super outgoing and friendly (another university does this)

 

Journey from subjective to objective capturing user experience

By Librarians at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
(their presentation was not uploaded to the site yet – lame!) 

It is the norm to conduct usability testing for library’s websites. Often, these tests focus only on effectiveness or efficiency rather than measuring users’ experiential perspectives This presentation covered UX research conducted in the fall 2015 semester.

  • User experience testing during library instruction
  • Screencastomatic , preloaded on computers
  • Testing website navigation
  • Learned tips as an instructor on improving teaching too
  • Used lemon tree software (?)
texas chili parlot

lunch with my former boss who was in town visiting his family, at the famous Texas Chili Parlor

Serve Design  – afternoon workshop – by Matt Franks, Faculty, Austin Center for Design

Book Recommendations:   Exposing the magic of design by Jon kolko  and Innovation X by Adam Richardson

“Services are co produced by people using them”

Independent touch points:

  • Perceived by users as a single functioning entity
  • Used together over time to solve a problem or achieve a goal

Process to service design-  Ethnography, Synthesis, Prototyping

Customer journey map exercise:

  • Perished state, what people working there think
  • Actual state, observe.
  • Do both and compare!

People-

  • Thoughts and perceptions
  • Feeling and emotions
  • Actions and behaviors

Researching the systems –

  • Environment
  • Recognitions and response
  • Affordance and indication

Activity Service Design Timeline (Journey mapping): Reflection timeline, draw a line, choose a time scale, intro a frame of reference, create first point “you are here now”, ask someone how did you get here, why did you come here. Shoot for 10-14 people

  • Do this in the environment where you are researching so thy can think about it visually and point to things.
  • Cut up all the things said and put on a wall to try to get patterns and theme
  • Mix the data up regardless of person
  • Sketch a visual flow of the data, touch points (sometimes have to infer touchpoints), visually add smiley faces etc.
  • Scale can be flexible, small timeframe or large
  • Learn to take better notes!
  • Create vignettes that illustrate a potential solution to a problem. One page.

notes from exercise sample timeline journey mapfinal ideas/prototyopes

 

 

 

 

Applying this back to our libraries:

  • There is a difference between Demographic vs User Group!
  • Don’t be predictive but provocative
  • Pay them with food (since we cant pay them $60/hour!)
  • Try these as the topic: “I want to get an understanding of your perception of the library” OR   “How does the library fit into your world”  perhaps walk through library with them, record with audio, and write while walking, always 1:1
  • Be concerned about everything – and be prepared to do it yourself
  • Get out of the building
  • Stop talking and make something

Screen printing the bags at the conference reception!

Screen printing the bags at the conference reception

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Constant strategy – morning workshop –  by Sarah Kznarich  @kznarich

Book: How to make sense of any mess by Abby Covert
Sarah says:  Learn to write if it’s the one thing you do!

“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful usable content”

  • Vision, goals and planning: What are your core values? Take them to the next level, why and how.  (Core messaging mad lib exercise)
  • Business goals now and users needs/tasks are key to understand and connect. (exercise).
  • Golden or core content-  Venn diagram of biz needs overlapping with user needs is core content.
  • Voice and tone leads to brand personality.
  • What we can do at OSU, take our core values and find ways to integrate that and get that in tone and voice in our library web site.

Margot Bloomstein, godmother of message architecture. @mbloomstein

brand sort exercise with a bought stack of cards:

  • Gather stakeholders
  • Categorize
  • Facilitate
  • Filter
  • Prioritize
  • Yay

Check out  Voiceandtone.com

“Be human, think about people at their worst and they’ll work much better when they are at their best too”

Organizing content:

Example:  menu bar that says just “resources, recommendations, research”as over arching categories, super menu below shows subcontent, a good way to organize.

Tools to use:

  • Optional sort  -$
  • Board thing – free
  • Trello – free

Content audit tools: CAT (content analysis tool)  OR Screaming frog

determining your biz objectives slide by @kznarich

used to define each page on the website

qualitative slide by @kznarich

who is in charge or what and when slide by @kznarich considering those involved and regular updates

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intro to Tableau
By Sarah  Tudesco Assessment Librarian, Yale University

  • Works in Mac and PC
  • Tableau public version too (less filters)
  • Started at Stanford, 7 years ago, VizQL for Data viz
  • Good for… Visual analytics, ad hoc analysis, dashboards
  • Not good for… Data warehouse or spreadsheet replacement, extract-transform-load tool

Our walk through in the session:

  • Once data in tableau, choose live or extract. Being new or needing to be fast then choose extract.
  • Filter next before bringing into tableau
  • At bottom click on the orange highlighted “sheet 1” – now you are in the work interface
  • Note dimensions and measures
  • Started by clicking # of records… Then can add other data points…can add other data points by dragging to “marks” box then choose way to add it.
  • Circular colored buttons are called pills.
  • Measure, right click to change the data type
  • Commons Z to undo
  • Different things happen when you click on things in different order, but you can always undo and go back.

————–

Something borrowed: interactive space planning and design
By Marisa Ball Florida International University Libraries

  • Iteration in space planning, small incremental steps, but over all plan/timeline.
  • It will be a lot harder to undue bad space design than it is for web design
  • End result or product — critique or review — analysis of data and feedback — insights identified — back iteration again
  • How to ID problems? Twitter was huge. Observational studies, student projects,

—-

Did not attend this one but the slides/content are great! Write Responsively: Content as a Touchpoint    https://www.dropbox.com/s/00tkiu0hei0jluf/D11%20-%20Write%20Responsively%20Content%20as%20a%20Touchpoint.pdf?dl=0

——

Understanding Service Design Principles in Creating Effective Library Services and Spaces by Kris Johnson (MSU)  

Book recommendation – Encoding Space: Shaping Learning Environments That Unlock Human Potential by Brian Matthews and  Leigh Ann Soistmann

Need of an overall Master plan for your space, do not do in small pieces – holistic is key! First did lots of small manipulations to spaces over the years  … But then slowed down and started thinking about the library as a whole.

Steps/Timeline:

  • Think about if you do yourself or a consultant
  • RFP for a master plan. Selected 2 from 6 proposals, selected a firm that is both architectural and design focused, particularly focusing on service design.
  • First step in master plan- talk to lots of people, both in the library, all stakeholders, etc.
  • Service design task force was carefully selected with right ethos of being open minded and constructively and from the whole library
  • 30/55 library staff came to the visioning session for library staff
  • To recruit students don’t do rsvps. They did push digital flyer to digital boards around campus.. But table in lobby of library and clip board to sign up was best

Cool Tools!!!

Visioning cards – pick a card that represents the library today and one you wish the library episode be; translates to flip card with keywords and orally report out. Design team took this and translated to key themes.

Headline activity – it’s a opening day of the library and pick a headline that would encapsulate, as individuals and then in groups, then on sticky notes on the wall. Design team then translated them into key themes.

Trends (I second that) – controversial statement, quickly agree or disagree “the future of a library is about technology but not books” then you vote on 1-2 you like, and then articulate and advocate on why.

Keep/toss/create – what you still really like about the library, what would you toss, and waists something news.

Ideal user experience map – think about one task to accomplish, think about everything that goes into that process (columns of 5 E’s

What makes a great service? Activity –  Creating  group created the service philosophy

This took 2/3 of the process.

The building plan now, is last 1/3 of the process.

The architects sat through every single meeting until now!

Service design feedback steps:

  • Identity patterns
  • Share back to stakeholders
  • Understand organizational implications – not all is space related
  • Make decision based on previousLy defined priorities or set priorities and make decisions.

——-

Closing Keynote: Library Innovation By Design
by Michelle Ha Ticker formally of IDEO now with FLUX

Design thinking for libraries: http://designthinkingforlibraries.com/

Desire – feasible – viable, where they connect is innovation!

Inspiration then ideation then iteration (see photo)

Inspiration- Field work, get our from desk have people show you not just tell you or do a survey check a box

Ideation – is best when working off ideas of other people, be visual, encourage wild idea, defer judgement

Iteration -think with your hands

All you need is  creativity, curiously,  fresh eyes

Rethink our thinking  from … to…

  • Reflecting on data … Imagining a future
  • Secondary research answers questions…. Design research opens up new questions
  • Org is structured by operational teams … Org is driven by strategic teams
  • Failure is avoided… Failure is invited

T shaped people very good in one area

X shaped people come from more than one field…better!! They are more diverse and play well with others.

Innovation is a verb not a noun. A process and an outcome.

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Thinking big but starting small Libraries are a living lab | Librarians are great service designers!

 

Link

I had the opportunity to attend the Oregon Highe Education Susatainability Conference at Lane Community College last week.  I “live blogged” the event on Google Docs and had a good interactive time with my staff.  Click that link to see all the great things I learned there! ~Lori

TheGirlWorksHere

 

My first ACRL WA/OR … in the Pack Forest!

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On the way to the Pack Forest for the ACRL WA/OR joint conference, Uta and I visited a few academic libraries  — slide show will be forth coming.  But this post is about my first visit to the amazing retreat center, in the woods at the Center for Sustainable Forestry at Pack Forest.

 

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There were about 90+ people in attendance, from a variety of academic libraries including research libraries and community colleges, for this 2 day event.  OSULP had about 7 of us in attendance (including our ACRL OR President Uta!).  Susan Barnes Whyte was the keynote to open up the day  “Your ACRL: An Update from the Board” so she mainly talked about ACRL nationally – its mission,  goals, demographics in the association etc. There was some discussion on ACRL nationally, should it be a part of ALA or its own entity (I feel strongly it should stay in ALA as we can learn from each other regardless of what type of library we are working in currently and we NEED to work together not in silos!) . Another short discussion was on if ACRL is supporting/recruiting  more paraprofessionals and offer more continuing ed leading to certification (not much time to discuss and this could be a great small group discussion at another time).  An interesting note in the national ACRL membership trends shows membership drop off after 5 years  is this perhaps until they get tenured?  What can ACRL do to keep people involved regardless of tenure?  Susan also noted that the  ACRL Plan for Excellence might be adding a 4th goal relating to how libraries effectively navigate changing landscapes.  She mentioned some upcoming library themes  (external pressures)  ACRL was researching:

  • credentialing/badges – might relate to non MLSers
  • curriculum/assessment
  • changing roles of librarians
  • future roles of conferences?
  • academic library as publisher
  • other HE organization
  • budgets!!!
  • professional ethics and large corporations and privacy

———————

Session 1: BLURRING THE LINES:  Encouraging Undergraduate Student Success Through Partnerships  (U of W librarians)

Key themes:

  • odegaard library  — focuses on UG/student learning focused
  • partnerships – for diverse viewpoints + collaboration –but be prepared to collaborate DEEPLY (more than colocation); sharing cultures, do not underestimate culture clashed, rethink what you want to assess together.
  • holistic view of the student – student support must transcend divisions
  • A need to support the “Hidden Curriculum” – understanding scholarship and inquiry which use to be the expectation by college – and includes subject content, college prep, working with new populations (1st generation, transfers), no GED curriculum —  so, how to transfer skills across courses?

odegardresearchwriting They created the OWRC (Odegaard writing and research center) 70+ tutors, 5 LIS students, 4 librarian tutors. both writing and research tutors collaborate: key:  “writing is where research issues come out, librarians need to be in the midst of that process”   … metalanguage for processes of inquiry – threshold concepts, joint writing and research librarians, recursive process employing reading, writing and discussion to create knowledge.

Other collaborative programming ideas from UW:

  • Health and wellness programming:  peer health educators in the library
  • Music Programming: 1 hour pop up performances such as a campus String Quartet.   “take a study session with a soundtrack”   Quiet areas for students too. Assessment show it calmed students and made them feel good while studying; Also it  connected them to the space and was a shared experience.
  • The gallup purdue index 2014 states  “feeling supported and having deep leaning experiences mean everything when it comes to long term outcome for college graduates” 

—————-

Session 2: Let Your Love Open the Door To – Student Development Theories  (OSU Librarians!)

Their presentation will be better than me summarizing… and since they are local, just go ask them about it! https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_xclEG6DYt7Rng1SVgyOVJoOEE/view

—————–

LIGHTENING ROUNDS

1 – Emma at Pierce College discussed opening doors to work with adjunct faculty in teaching and working at the ref desk.  Spend time on boarding, allowing them time to share ref desk questions and project work, give them a chance at co-teaching,  integrated reflective practices, and host an in-service. Adjuncts need to be part of and understand the culture of the library, they need time to debrief on ref questions etc.  See more:  goo.gl/1FimYU 

2 – Beyond Academia “what happens after I graduate?” AND #3 – University of Western States in PDX  both spoke about similar ideas:   why not teach a workshop/class for those getting ready to graduate. They will not have access to library resources so show them Open Access resources, ILL options, where is your local public library, information through their prof organizations, etc .  One library now offers a class the last quarter of their study  “so you are graduating now what?”  Students are surprised they can’t access literature after graduating!  It’s about managing vs meeting expectations.  Offer them options to help guide them once they graduate. She actually shows them a license agreement contract that says “no alumni”  (so they know we arent just being mean 🙂  She also shows how to set up alerts for TOCs and RSS/Feedly and of course open source and government stuff.

DAY 2

Library as a Lightning (talk) rod for Cross Campus Collaboration (Poppy, UW Tacoma) 

  • determine the gaps saw in grad students
  • created TAC  talks (as in Tacoma – aka “TED talks”
  • like Scholars Studio at UW Seattle
  • one topic 10 lightening talk events, 20 slides, 15 sec each, timed
  • gives grad students a chance to practice presenting
  • why the library? already the connecting to research, neutral territory, interdisciplinary
  • refreshments and reception afterwards
  • materials added to the IR
  • then integrated a peer review process as well

Reference in your Pjs (Nano Burling WSL)

virtual reference – after hours references study what was asked during the night. found they asked a lot of high level research questions

Bringing the stacks to Buzzfeed (Emily, UW)

Taught 5 sessions of a course that was in both jewish & Spanish departments that was everything from stacks to spec collections.  Cool idea – had them do a browsing activity instead of scavenge hunt – send to a general section in the library to review books related to their specific area. She also asked them : where are you actually doing your reading (buzzfeed, blog, facebook, etc). She let them posted their final work on Blogs or Buzzfeed.

Library as Open Education Leader Grant Summary (CC librarians)

LSTA grant  for CC in WA – a need to put librarians within the Open Ed process; a need to create open education advocacy plans by librarians . These librarians  created a course to teach how to talk to people and create your advocacy plan (beyond what is OER).  They used Press Books for it. Suggested best practices:  envio scan and find your support networks;

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Trivia Night was also a lot of fun!

 

AMICAL 2015

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This is a little late, but better late than never?

I was lucky enough to be invited to give a workshop at the 2015 conference for the AMICAL Consortium.  AMICAL is a consortium that serves librarians, faculty and technologists who teach and work at American international liberal arts institutions (like the American University of Cairo, of Nigeria, of Paris, of Afghanistan, and so on).  This year, it was hosted by the American University of Bulgaria, which is located in Blagoevgrad, about an hour south of Sofia.

a quickly moving small river, with trees on both banks and a bridge in the distance

View from city center, Blagoevgrad

I can honestly say that I have never been so well treated by confernece organizers.  They were kind enough to allow me to come in a couple of days early to manage the jet lag (Bulgaria is ten time zones away) so I flew into Sofia and stayed there overnight, instead of moving on directly to Blagoevgrad.  In Sofia, I met up with another attendee, Lori Townsend from the University of New Mexico who you may know as the librarian who first introduced threshold concepts into the library literature — a topic that has come back to the forefront as part of the new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education.  Lori and I spent some time walking around Sofia before making the trek to the conference site.

This was the view from my hotel —

Hotel room view — the plaza in front of the National Palace of Culture

We saw a lot of extremely old churches — the coolest one had an archaeological level dating back to the 3rd century below an actual, working church — but I wasn’t allowed to take photos there.  This is The Rotunda St. George, which dates back to the 4th century

It is believed that this is the oldest building in Sofia

There are also miles and miles of public parks — some all manicured and park-like, and others foresty and wild, like this one –

a gravel path leading away through a green forest

After a day of walking around Sofia, we arrived in Blagoevgrad for the conference.  My workshop was scheduled on the first day, before the opening keynote.  If you can arrange that kind of schedule for yourself – I HIGHLY recommend it.  Finishing with all of your responsibilities before the conference actually starts makes for an extremely enjoyable conference!

My workshop was in two parts — the first part was about developing good research assignments, and the barriers that students face when they’re handed badly designed assignments.  The room was jam-packed full, which made for a great atmosphere, but which made it difficult to get around to all of the students!

A white classroom full of students, sitting in small groups at individual tables

Information Literacy workshop, part 1 – AMICAL 2015

About 2/3 of the attendees stayed for the second part of the workshop – which focused on curiosity and imagination.  I’ll admit it — this part was more fun!

One of the great surprises of this experience happened at the beginning of the workshop, when I was introduced by one of the conference facilitators — who turned out to be one of my library school professors, Rebecca Miller. She’s now the Head of the library at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul!

a small group of librarians discussing research assignments. A red arrow is pointing at a young woman with brown hair and a black shirt.

Dr. Rebecca Miller, The American University of Afghanistan

Once my talk was over, I got to sit back and enjoy the rest of the conference.  The opening keynote from Lori Townsend was great — and did a really good job of highlighting the barriers I had described in my workshop.  The closing keynote was from Nancy Fried Foster, who reported on some new research that she’s done looking at the research habits of faculty.  Nancy has been to five (!) AMICAL conferences now, and has also done site visits at several AMICAL campuses, helping libraries around the world use ethnography to inform their space decisions.

In some ways, I think that it would have worked better for my workshop to happen at the end of the conference — Lori and Nancy did such a good job making the case for doing the work I was advocating for in my workshop, that I think it would have been a really effective progression.  One thing I didn’t realize before attending the conference was just how recently some of these campuses have started working on information literacy as a goal.  Some, like the American University of Cairo have been doing library instruction for decades now — but others have programs that have launched in the last couple of years!  I think i could have done a better job bridging those gaps.

The rest of the conference was a variety of shorter papers and talks where faculty and librarians shared case studies about the work on their campuses.  I got to meet some amazing educators — like Gohar Stepanyan, who teaches finance in Armenia, and who conducted one of the more interesting studies of student resource use that I’ve seen. Anguelina Popova is Bulgarian, but she runs the center for teaching excellence at the American University of Central Asia AND she’s pursuing a PhD from the Open University of the Netherlands!  She’s doing some amazing work in information and digital literacy, almost exactly on the other side of the world from us (and she also helped me navigate traditional Bulgarian cuisine). And Joyce Rafla has an extremely interesting job supporting pedagogy at the American University of Cairo — and is a definite kindred spirit when it comes to research assignment design!

This is just the tip of the iceberg — notes and summaries from all of the conference sessions are available at the AMICAL blog.  This is a fascinating organization and a really effective conference.  Highly recommended!