Academic reserves via ReservesDirect (as implemented at NCSU libraries)

-opensource

-functional requirements list: global, administrative, user, course, item, statistics

-contenders: Equella (not suited), Docutek e-res (no trail of versions over the semesters), Ares (good tools for the staff but not enough for faculty), ReservesDirect

-works through authentication (login); enrollment based for students (pull datafeed from registrar’s office); for profs, can only see own classes, not edit anyone else’s—can add their own documents and URLs; searchable, so faculty can see what is on reserve for other classes

-admin side: the’ve added ability to add a video; can see who has used a particular article over time; way to make links non-breakable as they move across platforms

-needing to educate faculty about metadata so the search function wrks better (or cean it up for them)

-good, useful canned stats with limiters for admin; faculty also get a report as to which items have been opened, how many times, and by how many students (but not which ones)

-pilot test summer 2008 w/ 4 faculty and 1 instructional designer; bug reports led to fixes (if had to do over, wouldn’t use faculty, just more instructional designers, since the one was the only peson who really gave useful feedback)

-full release fall 2008; lots of positive feedback from faculty

-migration: datamap, 17 gigs of data, broken links (all of them!), confused document icons, wayward data, safety net

-ran some instrution session for faculty, but they don’t take them—only the instructional design people. Made office calls in order to do one-on-one training. Also has a video tutorial.

-www.reservesdirect.org/wiki

How to be the Bad Guy Without Being Bad (now with LOLcats!)

-You have to have the right group of people with the right attitude in order to have everything work right; any other group of people makes for an entirely different group of people.

-She’s had 52% turnover in 3 yrs but now has the right mix of people.

-Poor performance eats at an organization, rendering it unproductive, slow-moving

-Basic responsibility: productive and well-disciplined individual (then they’re happy)

-3 types of issues: performance issues; attendance; beahviour/conduct

-punishment failures: uncertainty, inconsistency (favouritism), long-term disaster (looses power); breeds apathy

-performance improvement discussion: know your org’s process; serious and planned; specific goals; structured (one goal: have the person agree to change the behavior)

-prepping for discussion: identify the specific difference between the actual and desired performance (the person has to take responsibility, and that won’t happen without specifics—too easy for them to rationalize); anaylyze the impact of the problem (why to solve); identify consequences (“further disciplinaty action” isn’t enough—be specific); determine appropriate action plan

-actual vs. desired performance: type of problem (if there are multiple, limit to highest priority); be specific and limit to facts

-first conversation is about the behavior and opportunity to change; second is about failure to change (consequences)

-disciplinary: change in workflow, physical location, or whatever might be incentive

-5 questions: Did employee understand the policy that was violated? Did the employee know in advance that such behavior would be subject to disciplinary action? Was the rule violated reasonably related to the safe, efficient, and orderly operation of business? Is there substantial evidence that the employee actually did violate the rule? Is the action planned reasonable related to the seriousness of the offence, the employee’s record of service, and the action taken with other employees who have committed similar offenses?

-Conducting the discussion: Somewhere private; as soon as possible; give enough time for discussion (but don’t want it to be endless, either); Go straight to point—no sense dragging it out since they’re already freaking out or worried; let them talk about it from their POV and be an active listener; gain agreement; end on positive expectation of change (and follow up in writing)

-2 causes of performance probs: 1) lack of knowledge (training issue) and 2) lack of execution (clarify expectations)

-execution problems: clarify expectations; remove obstacles; provide feedbac; arrange appropriate consequences

-attendance problems: cause is irrelevant; only the effect counts. Individual responsibility—coming to work is a condition of employment, as is coming to work on time. Address as you would a performance issue: logical consequences; gain agreement; personal choice; further action.

-attitude probs: (other than psychotherapy, religious conversion, and brain surgery) Handle it same as others. Just don’t *tell* them they have a bad attitude! They’ve heard it before. Just get the expected behavior in writing.

-Discussion difficulties: “yeah but,” “I’ll try,” silence, irrelevancy. You’re going for a concrete answer. Keep the conversation on track.

-Dismissal (aka “No Fault Divorce”) Sometimes the best thing you can do is fire someone. It isn’t a judgement on them as a person—it just means that the fit is bad. Dismissal should not be a surprise to anyone involved. Lots of meetings, feedback, and written documentation. There is no other choice.

-Have a plan. Pre-meeting; meeting; post-meeting. Know org’s requirements.

-Run it by a jury first if you feel at all uncertain. Was employee aware? How do you know that they knew? Do you have documentation? Were they given time to improve? Was training provided?

-Write a script. Short and to point. Listen to response. Repeat as necessary. Anticipate questions and concerns.

-Avoid misdirected compassion. No one enjoys doing this. Don’t let that stop you from carrying out the process. Their actions have had an impact on your org. The time and effort is only worth it if the behaviour is fixed or they leave.

Q&A

-how do you deal w/ unions? Doesn’t have to do so now, but in past union was very supportive as long as there was cause.

-Before the divorce, do you consider moving them elsewhere within the org? Yes. Sometimes it works, but sometimes there are other issues. Act in good faith.

Usability Testing for websites and other applications

-focusing on tutorials and user guides

-started out as making sure web sites cohered to design standards, but has gradually morphed to include how users intact with the site—really have to think about how to include testing in implementation process

-ISO def’n: extent to which a product can be used by specified users…

-don’t forget the consent form! might have to talk w/ IRB, too

-Card sorting: use, perception, demand; have participants sort cards w/ headings, then have them come up w/ own headings, then interview (from soc and psych); can lead to navigation redesign; time consuming to test and analyze results (can take pictures of the cards post-sort to help)

-heuristic: best practice (Jakob Nielsen); need outside experts; evaluate for specific criteria (ie, match beween system and real world [library jargon]); fix now/soon/someday; hard to find experts (and $$); high learning curve; can be hard on the site designer due to negative focus

-Assessment testing: users complete tasks; objective or goal-oriented; review for duplication; arrange from easiest to hardest; best method for feedback on functionality and navigation; can be formal or informal; remember to debrief the participant

-choose right method: demographics of users, purpose of testing; need lots of user groups represented; use incentives to recruit (also, neutral location and timing) [do lib staff and librarians separately, since they use the site differently and staff might be more willing to be open w/out libs in the room—can be good to have outside moderators for some groups]

-testing 2.0 apps: Focus! assessment tests work best for this. specific audience; greater depth of test; user population may have no prior experience with the application, so have to account for that in the questions

-content testing: focus on info; tasks based on learning objectives; interfae independent

-software testing: focus on navigation; tasks based on finding info; interface dependent

-Be sure to be focusing on Content, not software (unless you’re doing OA, you can’t do anything about the software)

-pretest: use to refine questions; small sample user group; screen captures can really help; repeat until results are consistent; methods: interviews after, screen capture, filming

-designing test questions: be specific and task-oriented; pretest for validity and clarity; broad or narrow scope—keep to middle ground; longer is not better—don’t want to tire people out or have them get bored (on side of paper seems to be good; it looks do-able)

-samples:

-find book: Does the lib. own a copy of ____?

-access a db: Does the lib. have access to _________?

-find lib. hours: What time does the lib close on _____?

-find contact info: Where is liaison’s office?

-Use back button: How do you get to previous material?

-Nielsen says doing 5 should be plenty—diminishing returns after that. But they aren’t so sure.

-implications: highlights user interaction relative to design; focus on important content; indicates higher maintenance items; underscores tast complexity; potential redesign

-figured out that students were having different interactions w/ the info depending on the librarian who had created the libguide, so they’re going to write some standards for the guides based on their findings.

Q&A

-What type of 2.0? Tutorials and guides are the only ones they’ve done testing for.

-signifiant diff in user groups? Yes! Esp. btwn patrons and librarians, w/ libs not understanding what patrons want (user testing can debunk lib myths about what students want)

-institutional standards in the website redesign? yes. colors, header, and a few other things dictated by the school (Wartburg College) so they had to work around, but their head guy was ok with a little switcheroos

-how much time? card sorting: one afternoon (used magnetic board and handed out candy bars while at the ref desk);  assessment takes much longer, esp. w/ pretesting, plus fact that application are often new to the user (and sometimes the lib!)

Serials Evaluation/Advanced Excel “magic”

-They’ll post a sample spreadsheet to the blog that will have the formulas in it

-Filtering (highlight entire sheet befoe clicking on filter [in sort area]) – like Scott uses

-IF statements, esp. in conjuntion w/ formatting rules

-Makes the review process easier since all info’s in one place and can filter and sort as the discussion goes, as needed

-Easier to update since they’re now more familiar with the process.

-Can use icons instead of shading for conditional formatting

-downloaded info on journal formats from EBSCOnet so they wouldn’t have to flip back and forth

-use data to tell the story rather than text—takes up less space

-Data validation; list; =[named column of info {such as Action: New, Review Next Year, Format Change, etc.}]

-icon sets are under “conditional formatting”; create new rule; choose icon sets when formatting; can use different colors for diff levels of use (just have to decide what levels are what)

-COUNTER compliance makes it easier to standardize our workflows

-Don’t worry so much about “making the wrong decision”—can always reorder something.

Q&A

-Faculty involvement? Not for cancellations. They’ve moved to trimester and enrollment is up, so faculty are very busy.

-Do they use these spreadsheets as justification? Yes, for audits, chancellors, and other outside groups. easy to hide columns that don’t apply.

Cataloging and User Experience

-What users want

-info changing at umprecedented rate, but we’re not changing fast enough to keep up

-OCLC 2003 enviro scan; info conusumer trends: self-sufficiency, seamlessness (liesure/work overlap) – libraries are not seamless!

-2005 OCLC college student survey; satisfied with what they find through our search

-2009 OCLC what libs/users want; users=seamless flow, immediacy, enhanced content (TOCs, etc), advanced search options for narrowing, but w/ one box, expectations are based on popular sites

-Info now, in one place, and don’t want to have to go to lib to get it (but we’re not entirely digitized, so not there yet)

-Challenge=make catalog wrk for all

-

-Netx gen

-features:keyword search, relevance ranking, faceted search, search limits, did-you-mean, item recommendations, RSS feeds, user feedback, cover art, TOCs, reviews, tagging

-Endeca: works w/ existing ILS, simple, relevance and faceted, NCSU using

-VuFind: Open source (Villanova); faceted, author bios (browse search?)

-WorldCat Local: Does not sit on top of ILS, searches WC; single search, can link to ER, multiple languages (U IL-Chi)

-eXtensible catalog: still in development at U of Rochester (rollout in 2010); open source; will be discovery layer as well as converting existing MARC to XML to help prep for RDA’s scenario 1

(she didn’t mention Koha)

-If it metadata isn’t right, none of these will work right!

-RDA

-1997: AACR3 began to be talked about due to all the new e-formats, but work didn’t begin until 2004, so even more formats!; quickly realized that print-based ideas wouldn’t work; RDA started in 2005

-online product scheduled for release in 2010 w/ testing, eval, and training by national libs after release

-principles-based w/ more left to catalogers’ judgement (less ridgid rules); new formats shouldn’t flummox catalogers any more;

-content standard, not display standard (MARC, XML, whatever) w/ focus on user

-strusctured v. diff from AACR; still describing items, just adding other things; subjects, concepts; how to connect works, manifestations, etc., with subjects, people, and concepts

-www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5sec7rev.pdf

-

-FRBR

-user tasks: find, identify, select, obtain

-RDA is shaped by conceptual framework of FRBR; way of showing relationships to a greater extent than we have in the past

-Work (story, song, etc.), Expression, Manifestation, Item

- challenge is to take use from any expression or manifestation to all the related ones

-writers of FRBR and RDA didn’t dictate how to do it, so it’s up to the softwarre developers (only one company, in Sweden, that has developed a FRBR-based program)

-we currently catalog at manifestation level—wil be moving to datasets for each work, then another for expressions, and another for manifestation, but they’ll link in such a way that they’ll feed in info so things won’t have to be redone each time.

Three RDA scenarios

3: “flat file” = OPAC w/ no linking (card catalog)

2: linked bib and authority records (like we have now)

1: relational/object oriented db structure; linked datasets; new infrastructure w/ info based online (future); will we have the infrastructure, will linnked data always be available, “will someone change it like wikipedia?” (URGH! Haven’t we gotten over this yet?)

Prepare

-catalog w/ RDA in mind; note rlationships; use authority records

Q&A

-we currently spend a lot of time doing authority work; will it be more or less important in scenario 1? More important! But less work because the effort will be more spread out. (LC’s lack of subfield d codes, which they had quit doing to save time but are now going to want to get RDA to work properly)

-Is FRBR more a program than a database? She doesn’t know, doesn’t understand semantic web very well, nor metadata. But the metadata people think that this will work. Q’er is worried that will have to redo work; P’er says programs should be able to do the work to convert MARC to XML

-More on user tags in nextgen catalogs? Can you search by them? Depends on the catalog, but they should be set up that way.

[example throughtout was P&P and various off-shoots]

So far, the biggest thing I’ve learned from being on this committee is that technology is never as easy as it appears.

This might seem self-evident to many people, and I’d had a small taste of the concept when working on small web page programming projects for school. But implementing this federated search technology has driven most of my preconceived notions completely away.

Even with technology that’s out of beta and in use in many other places, things can simply not work in an entirely unpredictable way. My assumption had been that because our ILS and link resolver were from the same company as the two new products, there would be no difficulties. But systems get tweaked.

One of the things we’d been having difficulty with was authentication — definitely important! My inexpert understanding is that it had to do with a campus system, not a library one.  Luckily, that was solved by having people use a different login than originally intended. I’m just glad we had the option. Right now, the big “uh oh” is the lack of real-time availability. Then there’s the thing I’m most worried about: holdings information for Periodicals. It isn’t displaying.

These things will eventually get figured out or worked around, and then we’ll be able to start doing things like user testing. In the meanwhile, I’ve been reading some articles on that topic in preparation, even though I don’t know for sure that we’ll do anything formal. I hope so.

The homecoming parade just went by and it’s rather quiet in the library. I suspect it will be like this until we close, what with all the other activities throughout the day and football game this evening. We are at least saved from the tomb-like qualities of complete emptiness by the students showing their parents around and alumni on nostalgia trips.

* * * * * *

Nearly one o’clock and I just got my first non-directional, non-wireless, non-printing question. Thank goodness for the folks taking the education research class — they’re usually the ones who enliven my reference shifts.

* * * * * *

Thirty minutes later and another research-related question. Wow. Must be something in the air today.

* * * * * *

Or not. Since one o’clock I’ve had two questions, and it’s almost five. There are plenty of folks about, at least. Gotta like a good gate count.

It happens every fall. Along with the frenzy of move-in and the sound of the band practicing comes the highly unwelcome upswing in thefts. Bags, books, and laptops have all gone missing so far this year — some in as little time as it takes to turn your back on your belongings.

What always astonishes me is just how many people are willing to walk off and leave their things. Do they do that in other places? I don’t recall ever seeing people intentionally leave personal items on tables in malls or at large chain bookstores. Perhaps they feel safe in the library. Perhaps they’re just not thinking.

In any case, it saddens me to think that for a handful of students, one of their first memories of the library — of the entire college experience, even — is of having their belonging stolen.

It always seems odd in Oklahoma to be calling it the “fall” semester. At the mid-August start, we’re lucky to have highs lower than 95. Cest la vie. No matter the temperature, there are other constants: band members and athletes moving in early; confused new students getting tours and otherwise orientated; a new schedule at the reference desk.

We’ve got some unseasonal happenings at the moment, too. Our circulation department has three new non-student employees, all of whom start on the first day of class, Monday. (Yikes!) All of our Voyager data has been downloaded into Primo — our still-in-implementation federated search engine — and so we’re testing like mad to be sure everything’s doing what we expect.

Even though I’m still trying to figure out where the summer went, I’m glad the fall semester is beginning. no matter what I’ in the middle of, it always feels like a fresh start.

Things generally devolve on Friday afternoons. Folks in the department do more chatting than usual. I’ll clean my office or read a few of the professional articles that get culled from ToC feeds and saved to my desktop — it’s always time to do the latter when I can’t see the desktop picture any more.

Don’t get me wrong, my morning was productive: finished the last of the overlap analyses; got some collection development decisions made; talked with a few vendors; handled a handful of link resolver questions. One small link from a friend, though, has totally changed my day. I can say with some confidence that the single most important thing about today was clicking over to this.

See? Nerdtastic.

It’s gonna be a double date — and three of us are librarians.

‘Nuff said, really.