The focus of Cahoy’s presentation was on the library’s web interface. She spoke about using the library’s web site as an instruction tool. Many sites have too many dead ends and roadblocks. Libraries need to create a system that doesn’t need to be taught. Libraries need to move beyond using their web sites as reflections of their organizational models to viewing them as an application and teaching tool. Cahoy believes that students want to follow their own paths and not our links. Students like interactive sites and visual representations that bring our collections to life. The time is right to reinvent the web.

Cahoy pointed out several libraries with good examples of interactive and/or visual representation on their web sites: University of Minnesota’s assignment calculator; Maryville University’s Firefox library toolbar; Brigham Young University Library web page; the use of AquaBrowser on the Queens Library web site; and the open source Nelsonville Public Library site.

Cahoy believes libraries need to use their expertise to make the library’s online presence approach the simplicity and power of the internet. We can get there by involving students in all parts of the process. Public services people need to be involved as well.

Cody Hanson, University of Minnesota, was the second speaker. His presentation, “A Lesson from Web 2.0 for Academic Libraries, focused on adding value to the information we provide to patrons by putting the expertise of librarians “out there.� Examples of sites included Readit and Newsvine. Both allow users to read news events and add their own. Newsvine gathers the latest news and displays it based on what users find important. Digg.com is “all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the Digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff that's important to you!�

Difference between Digg and library is that Digg is publicly vetted by users. Ratings are visible and users can determine the reliability of an article by looking at the raters history of “digging�. Librarians do a good job of evaluating, but in our case very little of the process is visible. Online identity is big part of our patron’s lives and we need to be there, too, by personally and professionally evaluating books and articles. We need to put our expertise out there by exposing our selection process and expertise. By doing this we will add value to the information we provide in the same way we add value by staffing our bricks and mortars buildings

Emily Barton, from Michigan State, focused her remarks on getting the physical building into the flow by providing the right kind of services in the library. We need to know who our users are (Wired, March 2007, article on the “Snack Culture�). Look at their needs from their perspective, not from the view of traditional library services. Librarians need to go out and see what students are really doing. Play is learning the 2.0 way. We need to assess and evaluate what we are doing, how services are being used, and by whom. Libraries need to continually evaluate and assess. Keep an open mind and keep up with users. The best thing libraries can do is prove our value, not just profess it. If you have to tell people it is cool, then by definition it isn’t. Legacy services and functions that seem right for retirement or have no continuing value should be let go. There is no longer a set definition of what an academic library is. We need to do what we can to be relevant on campus and to students

Yes, another a shameless attempt at discovery....

IU instance of Sakai called “OnCourse.� They create templates for class web pages and push them into OnCourse using the library content management system. Instructor does not need to initiate request—librarian can do this for any class, but some faculty members prefer to create pages for library resources themselves. One advantage of having the librarian webpage: when students from the class ask a reference question, reference librarians can refer to the class web page for more context.

Susan Hollar, University of Michigan. Sakaibrary

U-M instance of Sakai is called “CTools.� CTools is basic campus infrastructure. Sakai was not designed to include library resources—“Sakaibrary� proposed to integrate licensed library content. A tool for citation lists is the first development priority and will be included in the Sakai 2.4 release later this spring. Instructors can search library resources via Metasearch from within Sakai, and add citations to their class web resources list. Added a “role� for librarians within CTools. Library Reserves list are sent to course CTools sites via RSS. U-M is developing a new tool to add “Ask Us� link to email reference to CTools.

Usability test findings of the value of this tool:

• Faculty like it, feel it reduces a number of steps for students
• Students see it as helpful
• Librarians are less sure of its value

Next steps:

• Ability to add citations more easily
• Next generation research guides: RSS feeds, audio, annotations
• Identify the librarian more prominently

John Butler, University of Minnesota. UM Portal Project

The University has developed a personalizable portal for the university website. As part of this, they developed “affinity strings� for individuals to describe the academic/administrative categories they inhabit: “tc.grad.ps.phd� could be the code for a PhD student in Political Science on the Twin Cities campus. There are 9500 different affinity strings, based on combinations of location, status, program and department. The university can develop templates for as many as they choose.

The library has added a MyLibrary tab, and developed templates for many affinity strings. As individual add resources, their choices can be reflected back to their affinity group. Resources can be grouped by who chose it—librarian, enduser, community

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe UIUC. Immersive Environments (Second Life etc)

Definition of an immersive environment:

• Interact through devices (keyboard, mouse, wii)
• Avatar as representation of self
• Can be either a controlled environment with a goal (game) or free-form with no goal, but boundaries are blurry

Second Life has a high experimentation and abandonment rate. 4.7+ million people inhabit it. UIUC teaches a class in “Introduction to Metaverse Building.� One course, “Teaching and Learning in a Virtual World� was taught in Second Life and a GSLIS class met in Second Life. ]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/CICLib07//2007/03/notes_from_beyond_the_walls_of.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/CICLib07//2007/03/notes_from_beyond_the_walls_of.html Notes from Sessions Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:37:14 -0600 Hi everyone,

I posted the video Finding Time (played during my presentation) on our library's web site. It's in the original QuickTime format, and is much clearer than the one posted on YouTube.

You can find the video at: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/instruction/time.mov

What a pleasure it was meeting and learning from you all at the conference!

I know... a shameless attempt to get readership.

Researchers there report that playing action video games, specifically first-person, an hour daily sharpens visual acuity. Slower, puzzle-style games, such as Tetris, showed no effect. Although video games don't have any effect on the size, shape, and thickness of the eye, all which influence "normal" vision, researchers feel that video games can substantially increase spatial resolution of their vision - the ability to see small, closely packed letters on eye charts. Video games may also be useful for patients suffering from amblyopia, or "lazy eye."

On the flip side, staring at a bright screen for long times can strain the eyes and disrupt one's biological clock.

Keywords: distributed, open/collaborative, diffuse, engaged, recombinant, process-based, experiential, and community.

Wendy structured her remarks as questions: What are our library assets? Is it all about search/discovery? Are library data shareable? What is "added value"? What do users want? What do users do? Can the library sustain identity in the flow? Does consortial activity diminish institutional identity? Can social tools work in a serious environment? Final questions: Whither innovation? What can you do? What can CIC do?

The session ended with a selection of clips from the videos that can be seen on the blog in full with reflections, comments, etc. from participants.

Notes by Lisa Hinchliffe

"What open access research can do for Wikipedia" by John Willinsky:

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/willinsky/

it includes “Wikipedean’s Guide to Open Access Research and Scholarship,� as an appendix:

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/willinsky/#app

Structural design of shared information environments – so people can find what they are looking for. But this is broader than the web. Interface design involves a balance of art and science. Be creative!
Emerging discipline and community of practice - bring principles of design and architecture to web.
To businesses – Peter helps corporate and public entities find multiple ways to find the same information – not about “one right way�
Search interfaces depend on labeling – tremendous pressure on one or two word labels – need to bubble up categories – what lies beyond door #1.

Find this presentation at: http://semanticstudios.com/cic.pdf
Notes contributed by Loanne Snavely and Ellysa Cahoy

He offered four messages and a disclaimer. This messages: Web 2.0 is the social web, people connecting to people, applied social psychology, and the long tail.

The disclaimer is that he does not claim to know what these mean for academic libraries.

He structured his session around the top 10 websites as measured by Alexa. The top 10 are Yahoo!, Google, MySpace, MSN, eBay, Amazon, YouTube, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook and (#11) CNN.

By exploring features of these sites, John highlighted features of the social web including tagging; recursive linking; customer-customer linkages; recommendations; and, scale and speed through mass participation.

Notes by Lisa Hinchliffe

Will look at the Alexa's top 10 web sites.

1. Yahoo
Tags. Tag clouds.
HubMed, something someone put together in delicious
GeoRef tags in Flickr

GroupLens did a study about different types of tags and how people feel about them:
-Factual tags (anime) are overall considered useful
-Subjective tags (surreal) are less useful, but everyone feels their own tags ARE useful
-Personal tags (mydvd) are not useful, but 87% people value them for organizing

Delicious tag studies: non power law of tags and tag frequency showing the dropoff of tags after the first 7 or so.

Social structure of the environment may be the very thing that is leading people to create valuable tags.

Can a useful ontology be created in a folksonomy? Is there any way to encourage that?