Your Library on the Web

Your library on the web looked at how Talis, and in particular Tais Prism 3 is being developed to enhance user experiences of the library. The session started by looking at each institutions / organisations web presence and asking if:

• Content was getting richer
• What are users needs
• What devices will be used to access information in the future
• How do we know if information is being used

Mobile learning will become the norm, this video advertising Kaplan university, promotes the use of learning anywhere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e50YBu14j3U

Looked at Edinburgh public library's site -this has just won awards:
http://yourlibrary.edinburgh.gov.uk

Library Catalogues

The following Prism 3 users have introduced innovative ways of engaging with their users:

Liverpool Public libraries

• on the front screen they have displayed new titles
• added google maps
• using RSS feeds

University of Northampton

• showing alternative sources for resources
• have a link through to purchase the book from amazon (Amazon pay the University for click throughs)

Leeds City Council

• requesting feedback from the catalogue,
• using facebook
• e-books show if they can play on a PC or a MAC

East Renfrewshire

• are using: follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Library Elf

Manchester University

• Have incorporated Chinese characters into the catalogue

Karen Reece discussed the possibility of using different Prism interfaces for different cohorts.
University of Sheffield are building an iphone app for Prism 3
There are now 50 customers that have switched to Prism 3, 31 have gone live. There is a 10 year life span span for Prism 3

Talis Assisting you - Brandon Amos

SaaS products: Engage (Public/community), Aspire (reading lists / Prism 3

Engage has been used at Coventry libraries were they have created tag clouds

The Furture of the Web- Andy Latham

Africa have bypassed desktop PCs and gone straight to mobile devices.

Phones are now becoming directional - will soon be able to plug in an RFID reader into phones and find books on the shelf.

Looked at Talis involvement with the semantic web - can see govt. information @:
http://data.gov.uk/

Predictions for the future:

• Ubiquitous mobiole devices
• Media agnostic devices - move between books/music etc.
• Location awareness devices
• Content surfaced everywhere
• Open data
• Linked data
• Merged services

The only constant is change

RSP Workshop for Repository Administrators, 4th Aug 2010

This event was aimed at people who work with the day-to-day running and adminstration of a repostitory, and therefore had a much more practical slant to the sessions, and sharing of tips between the delegates was encouraged throughout all of the sessions, so it proved to be a useful and enjoyable day!

The day started with an introduction, and then a short talk on the background to Open Access.  Rachel Proudfoot then delivered a session on Contacting Publishers: Issues and Tips.  The main points I took from this were:

• Look at the Sherpa request letter template, and also template for author's to use if they need to contact the publishers directly.  (We could supply this to author's when we have to ask them to contact the publishers)
• See if you can get a blanket response from publishers so you do not have to keep contacting them.  However it was noted that some publishers request that you contact them for each item.
• Record the responses that are received from each publisher.
• Consider having a formalised 'chase policy' to track publishers that dont respond.
• Feedback publishers reponses to depositors.
• Standardise version terminology to reduce confusion.
  
  

Survive or Thrive: Making the most of your digital content (JISC Conference 8th & 9th June)

SORT took place over 2 days - presentations all related in some way to the conference background paper which addresses how the LIS community can make the most of the huge amounts of digital content now available on the web. Subjects were very wide ranging but some key ideas I took away were:

• Reduce redundant effort by using shared services and use savings to fund new services
• Make your data freely available and reusable - can add value
• Sharing content can help engage users

Owen Stephens liveblogged the day and has given a much more in depth and accurate write up of the days than I could manage. So rather than repeating what's already been written below are the main points I took from  sessions I attended.

RSP Preservation Day

27 May 2010

The day focused on the higher level workings of digital preservation, engaging the right stakeholders, creating a high level preservation policy and getting preservation on the agenda at University level. It also showcased a number of toolkits and audit checklists to help organisations with preservation.

Summon increasing usage

Marshall Breeding reports on a study by Michigan’s Grand Valley State University which shows how intoducing Summon has increased usage of their resources. Full article here which has a range of impressive stats including:

Summon is enabling students to go directly to full-text, boosting the use of a variety of databases. For example, Academic Search Premier saw a usage increase of 92% and ABI/INFORM rose 354%.