“Next Generation” Technologies for the “Next Generation” Library User OR: How to Get Students to Think that the Library is Cool Kristen DeVoe Electronic Resources Librarian College of Charleston

The “Millennials”  Born between  Have a positive view of technology  Desire customization in all aspects of their lives  Are visual learners  Easily multitask  Get bored easily  Extremely Tech Savvy

Putting Social Technology to Work for Your Library  Blogging  RSS Feeds  Wikis  Video  Podcasting  Tagging/Social Bookmarking

Blogging  What’s a Blog?  Academic Libraries with Blogs Academic Libraries with Blogs  Blogging Glossary Blogger Blogging Blogrolling Post

Blogging  Can be a successful way to promote library resources and services.  Easy to publish the content online  Many blogging programs are free or inexpensive.

Before You Blog  Who is your target audience?  What is the purpose of the blog?  What kinds of content will blog posts include?

Before You Blog  Target Audience Who are they? Students, faculty, the outside community? What are the typical readers like? What kinds of posts will target readers respond best to? Short posts or longer detailed posts? Is a blog the best publication medium for your audience? Is your target audience online in sufficient enough numbers to make a blog worthwhile?

Before You Blog  Purpose & Content What are the key messages that you’re trying to convey with your blog? What kinds of information will you include? Is your target audience interested in this information? Will they read the blog?

Using Blogs in the Library  News and Events Blogs News and Events Blogs  Book Review Blogs Book Review Blogs  Promote Library Resources and Services Promote Library Resources and Services  Subject Specific Blogs Subject Specific Blogs

Choosing a Blog Platform  Local Software Installation or Remote Hosting?  Factors to Consider Archives Categories Search Comments Subscription Capabilities Syndication Design

Promoting Your Library Blog  Link on library homepage and secondary pages such as library events pages.  Catalog links-to and from the blog.  Bibliographic Instruction Classes  At the Reference Desk and Circulation Desk  On college radio or tv stations and lists.  Courseware such as Blackboard or WebCT

Tips for a Successful Library Blog  Regularly updated content – so that readers will depend on and expect new daily content  Good Content –Will your users follow a blog that offers stories on schedule changes, new books, and policy reminders? Probably not. Give them ideas and information that keeps them coming back.  Can be maintained in minutes daily. Blogs can involve considerable work. The last thing you want is spending any more than is necessary. With good content it can updated frequently.

RSS Feeds  What is RSS?  Creating RSS Feeds Creating RSS Feeds  Subscribing to RSS feeds Subscribing to RSS feeds  Why are RSS Feeds Useful?

RSS in the Academic Library  Announce the availability of new books and materials in a given subject area  Announce the availability of new electronic resources  Promote events organized in the library to faculty and students  Enhance Library Instruction for different courses by integrating appropriate resources  Announce availability of new research and learning opportunities in academic departments’ blogs

Promoting Library RSS Feeds  Bibliographic Instruction Classes  Register your Feeds With Yahoo! RSS Browse by Topic Directory _rss_submission _rss_submission  Hand out informative flyers & bookmarks introducing the feeds at orientation and on library tours.

Wikis  What is a wiki? Content Management System A website in which content can be created and edited by a community of users. Wikipedia is a good example of a wiki Wikipedia Pages connected by hyperlinks The strength of a wiki as a resource is often dependent on the strength of the contributing community.

Wiki Components  Pages that the wiki community users can add to or edit (example)example  Discussion area on each page example  Lists changes made to a particular page  List of changes made to entire website  Search function (example)example

Benefits of Wikis  Easy to use Web-based Simple syntax (don't need to know HTML)  Anyone can make changes – you don’t have to contact the webmaster or subject guide editor to make changes  Many free and open source options  Flexible and extensible

Wikis in the Academic Library  Subject Guides as Wikis Discussion section where users can add comments to the subject guide Users can easily subscribe to RSS feeds for particular subjects and be updated on changes to the subject guide St. Joseph County Public Library (Indiana) Ohio University CommWiki

Wikis in the Academic Library  Multi-Disciplinary Subject Guides (ex. A guide on women’s studies/film studies)  Events Pages  Courseware for BI classes (example)example  Popular Reference Questions (Internal Use)

Wiki Platforms  Hosted Wikia JotSpot PBWiki SeedWiki WetPaint  Installed (hosted on your server) MediaWiki PMWiki TWiki PhpWiki Compare Wikis at WikiMatrix WikiMatrix

Wiki Tips  “Seeding” the Wiki  Documentation  Developing Content  Security  Guidelines

Video  Create a library presence where your users are on video sharing sites like YouTube and Blip.tv  Can be a lot of fun!  Video Podcasts and “Vlogging”

Video Sharing Sites  Google Video (beta) Google Video  Blip.tv (beta) Blip.tv  YouTube YouTube Hosts over 6 million videos with a growth rate of 20% a month

Uses of Video in the Academic Library  Promote New Library Products and Services (example)example  Serve as an “icebreaker” in bibliographic instruction classes (example)example  Promote the library staff and services (example)example  Highlight Special Events etc. At the Library (example)example  Instructional Videos and Tutorials (example)example  Student Involvement through Video Contests (example)example

Video Equipment  Video Camera  Some Video Editing Programs Windows Movie Maker iMovie Final Cut Pro

Podcasting  Simple means of distributing audio (or video) content using syndication feeds (such as RSS)  Users can subscribe to a feed of a podcast’s audio content and receive automatic downloads of new content as it is made available online.

Podcasting  Record an audio file  Add your audio file to an RSS feed  Market your podcasts! Bibliographic Instruction Reference Desk School Paper Orientation and Library Tours   List of libraries with podcasts asting asting

Podcasting  Library Tours (example)example  Interviews with faculty, students, writers, etc. (example)example  Recordings of library events and speakers  Description of new resources  Bibliographic Instruction  Add subject specific podcasts to subject guides

Podcasting  Audio Podcasts  Video Podcasts (Vodcasts)

Social Bookmarking  What is Social Bookmarking? System for internet users to store, classify, share, and search internet bookmarks. Relies on user “tagging” to describe resources.(example)example Users can click on tags to find other resources related to that tag.

Social Bookmarking  Advantages Semantically classified tags Access bookmarks from any computer connected to the internet find which sites are related to a particular site ("who ever bookmarked this, also bookmarked...") Share bookmarks with friends & colleagues

Social Bookmarking  Disadvantages No standard set of keywords (controlled vocabulary) Mistagging due to spelling error No standard for the structure of tags (capital letters, punctuation) Multiple meanings for one tag No indication of hierarchical relationship (ex. Cat and Siamese)

Social Bookmarking  Demonstration Demonstration  Del.icio.us Del.icio.us  Connotea Connotea Automatically extract bibliographic information Identifiy articles by DOI Import and export references Narrower focus (scientific community)  CiteULike CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details Import and export references specifically designed to work with academic papers

Links  Blogging Links ex.php?title=Academic_libraries ex.php?title=Academic_libraries (free) (free) (fee) (free)

Links-RSS  Services that Generate RSS Feeds FeedXS Feedbuilder RSS Headliner degen/rss.shtml degen/rss.shtml

Links-RSS  Programs that Generate RSS Feeds RSS Builder (free) der/ der/ FeedForAll (39.95)

Links-Wikis  Wiki Applications Seed Wiki (free) Schtuff (free) Media Wiki Instiki PmWiki  Example:

Links-Video  YouTube  Blip  Google Video