L&LR staff blog

Following up on my last RefWorks post.

On Monday I had a phone conversation with Stephanie Faulkner, client services manager for RefWorks-COS. We discussed my desire to increase our ‘reach’ (currently 5.6% of the University are active users), and Stephanie went through some ideas, based on what the top 50 worldwide RefWorks-using institutions have found successful.

I’d appreciate your comments on these 10 ideas:

1. Let’s aim at getting 10% of the University (c. 1100 people) active on RefWorks by the end of the coming academic year - according to Stephanie, big U.S. schools have no problem achieving that, with smaller specialist institutions getting even wider reach. Should we also set ourselves a more ambitious target for – e.g. – H,L&SS, where there’s already more of a culture of using ref. management software?
2. Over the outgoing year, we had 1,739 hits on RefShare – obviously more people than expected are using RefWorks to share their references with others (it’s not a feature that I tend to dwell on in training, but there’s clearly huge potential for use by lecturers, research groups, and for student group work). Let’s capitalise on this evident interest by using RefShare ourselves (*ahem*) and by selling it a bit more in training.
3. We could make use of RefWorks’ own recorded webinars, YouTube, and more of our own screencast content to provide alternatives to face-to-face training.

4. Stephanie shared some in-depth usage stats with me – figures that aren’t available through the standard admin interface. More than 1,000 new users joined RefWorks last calendar year at Lincoln – and nearly a third of those accounts are still being used. By all accounts, that’s a very good rate of adoption and of retention. And 2009 looks like it’ll be better still – 876 new accounts already, with good repeat usage, and we’ve not even hit the Octover/November ‘peak’. The faculties need to know that the demand exists out there amongst their students – is now the time for us to propose that all level 1 students should be taught it?
5. Or, how about approaching the S.U. and/or student reps to see if they’d be willing to act as on-the-ground advocates for RefWorks?
6. The ability to attach documents to items in your RefWorks account. I’ve actually been sitting on this new(ish) feature of RefWorks for some time, because of copyright concerns – which I’m fairly sure now are groundless. Assuming that is the case, I think we should launch the RefWorks Attachment Feature at the start of semester A 09/10. If nothing else, perhaps we’ll be able to revitalise a few lapsed users by drawing their attention to a new & useful tool.

   RefWorks users now have the ability to organize and store images and documents within their personal database. This new feature allows users to attach non-bibliographic information to their references, much like attaching files to an email message. The incorporation of this feature allows users to upload files to existing references stored within their RefWorks database.

7. Would all L&LR staff be willing to put a hyperlinked RefWorks ‘ad’ in their email signatures – perhaps just over the course of a short blitz campaign? This is one technique that’s led to uptake in account creations elsewhere. 
   

   (Image: fairly poor example of email signature ad campaign!)

    

8. Similarly, RefWorks will create for us (given a couple of weeks’ notice) a custom, hperlinked University of Lincoln banner ad to appear at the top of our users’ RefWorks accounts – where currently RefWorks advertise some of their own new features. I think this is a good opportunity – so what feature should we advertise? 
   

   (Image: advertising space...)

    

9. Nearly there… RefWorks have announced (though only to administrators, and on their Facebook group) that they’re developing a new, improved interface, to be launched at the end of 2009. Apparently it will provide a cleaner, more modern look & feel, easier menu options, buttons for key features, and area for institutions’ own promotion. The new interface has apparently been developed through an “extensive review process with a combination of criteria including a thorough analysis of user workflows, a collection of user surveys, and end-user review sessions for design validation” and will run alongside the ‘old’ (i.e. current) version of RefWorks for an “extensive period, allowing ample time for transition”. Here’s another perfect opportunity for us to promote RefWorks and maybe attract some new users.
10. Finally, your own idea(s)……………………………… please leave comments below!

Organised by the East Midlands Section of University College and Research Group on the 28^th April and held at the Kimberlin Library, De Montfort University, Leicester, Focus on your teaching was primarily an event for librarians teaching in HE institutions but held relevance for many other staff.

It struck me that many of the things that were presented and discussed at the event, Lincoln already carried out. Lincoln could present a similar event, perhaps based around the mid-point strategy review action plan, along with contributions from library staff from other HEIs.

For me, the main theme of the event was about teaching information skills to students without the traditional ‘talk-demo-do’ method of introducing a database then demonstrating its various search functions, before letting students perform keyword searches themselves.  Although technology probably holds the answer, I felt that  no single answer existed. Students often find databases themselves are the problem because they are so hard to find, hence the reliance on Google.  Derby University’s Emma Butler and Catherine Varney demonstrated how the software Captivate offered a possible alternative; recording what the demonstrator performed on screen (i.e. a demonstration on how to retrieve articles from a database) and the ability to record a voiceover. Allegedly it’s as easy to use as PowerPoint. The presenters recognised that the software is a supplement to inductions and workshops but could not become a replacement. Emma and Catherine suggested that the short online tutorials work fine as a refresher and could be placed in an area on a VLE, like Blackboard.

Chris Powis from Northampton University discussed the dilemma of the strategic learner within HEIs who only want information they need to complete an assignment or course of study.  Librarians, he said, were ‘tool/search focused’ and students are ‘result/content focused’. Bridging the gap was key to maintaining relevance of the profession, otherwise there’s a risk of disengagement.

Richard Hall from De Montfort University also spoke about technology responding to the transitional phase of universities moving away from the traditional method of teaching students information skills.  Richard said that Blackboard is used as a safe environment and more challenging methods of reaching students needed to be deployed to enhance student progression, improve retention and the learner experience, like utilising Facebook or other Web 2.0. The audience discussed afterwards that they needed to achieve relevance not try to be perceived as trendy.

I have some handouts from the event if you would like copies.

Daren Mansfield (Academic Subject Librarian)

F.A.O. all staff in L&LR at the University of Lincoln.

I’ve ‘pushed the button’ on quite a big change for the way L&LR staff post new messages to our three blogs. The main result of the change is that we’ve been brought within the main University blogging platform. Our old blogging interface [image below] is now defunct.

The old, now-defunct blogging interface.

And here's the look of the new platform.

This post explains [below] how you can get started using the new platform. Please note that your old password for the blogs is no longer valid – also that the web address to log in and post to the blogs has changed.

But first – why the change?

• The new platform offers the potential for building a much greater readership of our blogs. It plugs in to other blogging activity going on at Lincoln and brings us closer to the centre of the University.
• We benefit from the social-networking aspects of the “BuddyPress” extension to WordPress blogging software which forms part of the new platform. BuddyPress has been described as “a Facebook for the University of Lincoln” – a description which may excite or depress you! :-)
• The new blogging platform is based on a newer, updated version of WordPress software, with more powerful features, and which is hopefully easier to use.
• Because it uses the same installation of WordPress blogging software as all other University blogs, there’s no need for us (me!) to manage the software separately – that’s less work to do, and fewer add-ons and user accounts to keep up to date.
• The new platform is attached to your standard University account, so you don’t need a separate password any more. One less to remember…

~~~~~~

Here’s what you’ll need to do to start using the new blogging interface:

1. Go to the following address (and save it in your bookmarks – N.B. this link replaces the previous login link):
   • http://blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/
2. You’ll see the login page. Log in with your normal, University username and password (don’t use any passwords you’ve used for the blogs until now – they’re history!)
3. Hit ‘log in’. You’ll see the message “There is a problem with this website’s security certificate“. Click on “Continue to this website”. (This message will disappear, in time).
4. Using the toolbar at the top of the page, highlight “My Blogs”. A drop-down menu will appear.
   
5. Highlight the name of the L&LR blog you want to post to (at the minute, we’re running three blogs). If you can’t see the blog to which you want to post, please let me know and I’ll give you the correct rights.
6. Then click on “New Post”.
7. This will take you to the author’s interface for the blog you selected – equivalent, but different, to the admin interface on the ‘old’ Blogs·Library·Lincoln platform.
8. Don’t forget to add tags to the post you’re creating, to insert images as appropriate, and to follow these blogging tips.
9. Any questions? Please ask me for help, or take a look at the “New here? Read this…” message on the new blogging home page.
10. It’s also worth taking 5 minutes to update your Profile (under ‘My Account’ at the top of the page). You can add a photo / image, change your profile name (from e.g. “dbeckham” to “Dave B.” or “David Beckham (Football Librarian)” – however you want your name to appear on your blog postings in future, and add additional information about you & your work within the University.
    

That’s it! I still need to do some work with C.E.R.D. to ensure that traffic to our blogs is being directed to the correct address [and also to close down our old blogging software], but our readers can continue to access our blogs in the way they’ve always done (directly on the Web at blogs.library.lincoln.ac.uk, via RSS feed, email subscription, or through the in-page feeds on the University website and the Portal), but we get the benefits of being part of the much wider University blogging community that’s being built up at blogs.lincoln.ac.uk.

Again – any questions about the change, please talk to me!

Paul S.

I promised to turn my as-it-happened notes from last week’s Mashed Library event into a proper, readable account of the day. A few other attendees have already written up their respective ‘takes’, including Tony Hirst, Paul Walk, Jo Alcock and organiser Owen Stephens, to whom credit is due.

Me, looking wide-eyed at Mashed Library '08. Photo by Dave Pattern.

Here’s my effort…

The day started interestingly enough, spotting Red Kites from the window of the train on the way down to London. Once I’d located Birkbeck College and the room under the library which was to be the venue for the day, it was straight on to connecting to Birkbeck’s e wireless network (the first challenge!).

This was more of an “unconference” than a traditional, speaker-driven event, with everyone tapping away at their laptops and nipping across the room to compare notes (and to get more coffee – the day’s catering was excellent!) throughout.

The first demo was from Rob Styles from Talis, who gave a quick explanation of some of the possibilities of their Talis Platform for searching and “augmenting” library (and other) data – a Harry Potter-themed example (Hogwarts’ finest kept cropping up through the day, which perhaps gives you an insight into the reading habits of systems-librarian types?) of a search of Talis’ test bib. data store created an RSS feed which was then ‘dipped’ (‘augmented’) with book cover images from another data store.

I certainly think we should take a look at Talis Platform and consider joining to their development network. I’ve already signed up to their mailing list / Google Group.

Some useful links:

• About Talis Platform
• Talis Platform developers’ wiki
• UK Bibliographic Store

Next, Tony Hirst from the OU ran through a number of freely available mashup-inspiring tools that can inspire people who “aren’t happy on the command line” (i.e. normal library workers!) to play with library data. Tony knocked together a series of lightning mashups, retrieving and presenting book cover images and Amazon reviews for a given ISBN, using a number of sites including:

• Amazon Web Services Made Simple
• Google Docs – spreadsheets can be used to scrape HTML pages and manipulate the data using familiar cell/formula operations
• Yahoo Pipes and the similar pipes.deri.org
• ThingISBN

I’ve already started mucking around with Yahoo Pipes to repurpose the data that’s locked up within services such as the A-to-Z; to create bespoke combined blog feeds for my own use, and (tentatively) on the XML output of HiP. I don’t doubt there’s more we could do (particularly involving the readily-available book-cover image collections that are out there), but as with a lot of this 2.0 stuff, it’s where to start?

Timm-Martin Siewert from Ex Libris was next up, demo-ing EL Commons, their rough equivalent to the Talis Platform – with the important difference that, at the minute, access is restricted to Ex Libris customers only. EL Commons provides usable APIs for various EL services, including Primo, Metalib, Aleph, etc. Timm was closely followed by Mark Allcock of OCLC, who showed a number of that organisation’s developer tools, including the WorldCat Developers’ Network.

I was impressed (and slightly overwhelmed!) by the range and number of OCLC’s reusable services which Mark mentioned, including registries of copyright information, journal ISSN history, and more. Some are restricted to OCLC members (although the Developers’ Network is not), but others are open to all:

• WorldCat Affiliate Services (not restricted to OCLC members)

Verdict – merits further investigation.

If your head is beginning to swim at this point, you’ve about reached the stage that I was at by now!

Aaaaaaaagh: code!!!!! Photo by Dave Pattern.

Last up before lunch was Ashley Sanders, a programmer at MIMAS. He spoke briefly and tantalisingly about some significant developments on the horizon for both COPAC and ZETOC, including better persistence of searches (presumably so they could be used in RSS feeds etc.) and a “modify record” tool that may be opened up to the community on the live service[s], once the question of authentication can be sorted.

Gratefully, on my part, we broke for lunch* (which was very good, again).

There were a number of interesting chats going on. In particular, around the OCLC’s “powergrab” (not my words!) of reuse-rights relating to catalogue records which it provides (a debate I’ve been following with mild interest) vs. a more “free”, creative-commons-Web2.0-hippy approach to making bibliographic data available for sharing. It was getting quite heated at one point (in a polite, librarianly way, of course).

I got more coffee.

The next bit of the day was the bit I struggled with most. Perhaps I’ve been conditioned to crave structure(!), but as people milled around, discussing ideas and working in small groups, I started to feel a bit on the periphery. As it was, I collared Rob Talis and got him to explain (patiently… and patiently over again…) how Talis Platform might be used in practice. After I’d asked a few daft questions it started to become a bit clearer (Rob – if you’re reading this, that’s not any reflection on your explanation, only on the time it takes for new ideas to sink in to my brain). At the time, I wrote:

“hadn’t realised this was entirely free (as developer) and unconnected to Talis LMS. I’m suffering from library-terminology disjoint syndrome at this point – different language / terms of reference.”

As with all of this stuff, I’m convinced you can only start to expose the value by getting stuck in and trying things out. Library2.0-in-theory doesn’t work.

My sanity was restored considerably at this point by Dave Pattern, who came over for a chat, and by the cakes and scones that started to appear (with more coffee). Dave and I talked about OPAC-wrapper / social-discovery-layer and metasearch applications (much, much more of which later…), the gathering and intelligent use of statistics, and Dave’s valuable tweaks and improvements to HiP.

My tags as I blogged on the day. Photo by Dave Pattern.

Credit also due to Dave for his photos, some of which I’ve used here.

The day wound up with one last presentation: this time from Paul Bevan, of the National Library of Wales. His was a talk I could identify with! Themes relating to geographic isolation (of Aberystwyth); a shift to virtual rather than physical visits to the library; institutional ‘buy-in’ and acceptance of the use of free 3rd-party social media applications; accessibility and the differing needs of different groups of users.

• This isn’t the exact presentation that Paul gave on the day, but it contains some of the same slides. It’s well worth a quick look.

Finally, Owen got everyone in the room to shout out what they’d been working on through the day. I admitted that I was nervous about the idea that I was meant to have achieved something by the end of the day (ha, ha) and that I didn’t really have anything to show. Others had been working on some really interesting ideas, including lots of use of Yahoo Pipes to bring together information from Amazon, Wikipedia, Talis Platform et al., and a couple looking at deriving geodata from MARC geographic name headings, to display catalogue records (e.g. for items relating to a particular town or city) via a map interface.

Incidentally, I had my first real ‘Mashed’ idea on the train on the way home. I’m working on something quite interesting, and if it looks as if it’s got legs, I’ll post it here.

This was a fantastic day in many ways, with 1,000 ideas a second being generated. I did find it slightly frustrating… I just need time and a quiet room to get my brain around this kind of thing, and I felt that 80% was passing me by. The challenge, I think, for L&LR, will be to identify which services and techniques have real potential for sharpening up our own service, and putting appropriate time aside to develop them properly. Otherwise, I fear, it’ll ever be seen as a slightly eccentric hobby (“You do what with pipes!?”)…

Last set of links:

• Mashed Library ‘08 – Ning (social networking) site
• Google Alerts RSS feed
• Facebook site I set up after the event

I’ll certainly be looking forward to Mashed Library ‘09, and if possible I think two or three of us should go next time.

Paul

—–

*No, I don’t know why I call it “lunch” at a conference, when it’s “dinner” in all other situations.

David Lee King has some suggestions… (picked up on UKeiG’s combined feeds Yahoo Pipe).

Warwick, Loughborough, Huddersfield, Durham, Exeter, Liverpool, UEA, Birkbeck… on facebook libraries all.

Joss introduced me to Yammer today… it’s a ‘microblogging’ service, similar to Twitter or the Facebook ’status update’, but designed for work – it looks like an interesting way for groups of dispersed colleagues to keep in touch with what the others are up to in a non-threatening way!

There’s a small (6 users!) but growing University of Lincoln presence.

• Web address: http://www.yammer.com/

Paul