NEASIST Events

more presentation and handout links

If you'd like a refresher and haven't yet downloaded a copy of the speaker handouts and presentations in PDF format, it's not too late:

Megan Fox:
bibliography
presentation for on-screen viewing and printable version

Jenny Levine:
presentation

Michael Stephens:
bibliography
presentation for on-screen viewing and in printable form

Podcast recording #4: panel discussion

Here is the recording of the panel discussion with questions and answers:

Panel discussion and questions 12.1 MB (35:08 minutes)

Podcast recording #3: Michael Stephens

Here's the 3rd talk of the day:
Michael Stephens 18.2 MB (52:50 minutes)

Podcast recording #2: Jenny Levine

Here is the second speaker of the day:
Jenny Levine 20.6 MB (59:54 minutes)

Podcast recording #1: Megan Fox

We recorded the event on cassette tape and I finally had a chance to digitize them and convert them to MP3's. I used Audio Hijack Pro on Mac OS X.

The first time I did it, I saved them in stereo without thinking and that caused huge file sizes. So I converted them to mono in order to have reasonable file sizes for downloading. Here is the first one:

Megan Fox 22.8 MB (1:06:10 minutes)

More New Weblogs

In addition to Lichen Rancourt (announced here), Ken Varnum has also started a new weblog where he will explore the use of RSS in libraries, inspired in no small part by the NEASIST Spring Event.

Congratulations to Lichen and Ken. Everyone else who is moved to implement new technologies in their library please report in! I'm going to add the new weblogs to our menu on the right.

Program Discussion

By all accounts, yesterday's program was a huge success. Many folks have already indicated that they have been inspired to start using the tools for personal use or in their professional environments. Others have been motivated to delve deeper into some of the more complex issues related to security, control, and the challenges of overcoming institutional resistance to these tools.

We encourage you to use the comments area of this post to:

- share your thoughts about the day;
- report on your experiences in beginning to utilize these tools and/or the reactions of your colleagues/institution;
- pose additional questions you thought of on your way home;
- present various viewpoints about the topics, or;
- recommend additional resources you have found helpful.

We hope this blog can be a collective resource for everyone in the immediate future as we translate the knowledge and inspiration we gained yesterday into action and improvements in our own environments.

Megan's slides

You can download my slides at http://web.simmons.edu/~fox/neasist.html.

I have included both the full screen version, and 6 slides to a page for printing.

Thanks for a great event yesterday!

Stats, oh how we love our stats

I didn't think to take a picture last night, but after the "show" a few of us went to dinner to relax, and er, talk about ASIST, NEASIST and future programs (we just don't stop). Caryn had deposited Jenny and Michael at the airport and while she was waiting for us to arrive at the restaurant she had already started going through the stack of evals from yesterdays program and compiling the data!! We love feedback and hearing what other types of programs people want to attend (hands-on, lectures, etc.) and more importantly, WE LISTEN.

Screencasting

Here's a good site for learning about Screencasting. http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/02/21.html

Check out this 5 minutes screencast about del.icio.us.

Blogging Michael's talk

I've blogged Michael's talk on My Gadget Life.

Librarian tag on Flickr

Michael mentioned the librarian tag on Flickr. Check out the photos of librarians' shoes! http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/librarian/

Panel happening now...

Cool stuff, Jenny received two IMs from folks NOT attending the conference. Send your questions in..

New Terms

At lunch today, someone besides me used the term "RSS-ified." I've died and gone to heaven!

Michael's Presentation as Blogged by Jenny

I blogged Michael's presentation, too....

12 Steps to Optimizing Tech in Your Library (another list – yay!)

1 – is the technology you’re pondering going to meet your mission? biggest question of all!

“the cabinet of dead and dying technologies” at his library  :-)
— the idea of “techno divorce”

South Huntington PL – cataloged iPods and wireless laptops and lend them out for users to take home. Yay, SHPL!

Sometimes you have to take a risk, although you need to have the resources to do it

“Evidence-based decision-making” = do your research before deciding! come to the table prepared

Soapbox time: why blog at your library? it works, it’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s cheap. how many things can you say that about?
— don’t listen to “some” people *cough* Gorman *cough* Cronin *cough*

Talked to someone from a library that had spent $20,000 on VR software but cut the cord on it when they realized the ROI was $500 per question! *cough* IM *cough*

Recommends that everyone read Death By Meeting by Patrick M. Lencioni

Michael is highlighting OCLC’s Environmental Scan. Yay, OCLC!

Lots of great stuff about IM; showing a screenshot of video IM (comb your hair!)

Tells a story about a woman he knows who has conversations with her boss on IM that she could never have in person (serious, in-depth discussions)

Excellent – now he’s introducing the idea of presence! References his article with Aaron Schmidt in LJ about IM.

Tells a story about a woman who started an IM training session by asking the group, “Why are we doing this?” Answer: because we have to meet these users in their world!

Shows a screenshot of staff blogging a conference internally for other staff to read

Showing screenshots of sites with RSS feeds in Safari in the new Tiger software on his Mac
— can just click on the RSS button in the browser address bar to see just the feed, but formatted for easy reading
— also showing the new screensaver that displays an RSS feed!

Nice graph for “unified mechanism for unified message”

Showing Harris County Public Library’s customized toolbar. Yay, HCPL!
Make your own at Best Toolbars!

Of course Michael is now mentioning Jybe!  :-)

Don’t forget to unplug!

Question from audience: does SJCPL rotate folks answering IM questions?
Answer: Yes, and even have a second IM name where they put people on hold and pick it up there.

Question from audience: ROI on blogs and RSS?
Answer: can approximate stats (Jenny adds: FeedBurner!

Question from audience: how does a small public library fit this stuff in?
Answer: can easily fold in blogging, which gives you an automatic RSS feed, IM, and wireless

Question: issues of security and privacy in sensitive environments - come back fired up from events like these, only to be told they can't do it because of these issues
Answer: some issues, especially if can't encrypt them

Mac Tiger: auto RSS and RSS screen saver

Michael showed Tiger's new built-in RSS capabilities - too cool. One feature is you can have an rss feed as a sleek rotating graphic screen saver... Check out this pic for a flickr photo of Michael's presentation showing Jenny's first blog posting of the day of the conference. Whew. So neat! So connected!

IM at the Library

Michael is talking about IM right now, specifically at his library. I know that special librarians in particular think this doesn't apply to them, but they're wrong. One of my favorite Stephen Abram quotes (because I completely agree with it) is when he said that these tweens, teens, and college students that use IM as their primary communication method will soon be in the workforce, and they're not going to want to email with their librarians.

Delicious!

After this morning's talks, couldn't resist this picture from lunch... delicious! ; )

Death by meeting

Michael recommends this book: Death by Meeting.

Jenny's Presentation

Of course I forgot to mention that my presentation will be available as a PDF file at http://www.sls.lib.il.us/infotech/presentations/2005/neasist.pdf when I get back to the office tomorrow.

Michael's Top 12 list...

I'm not going to relist his 12 here, as his full presentation is already available in the blog. He's really hamming it up for the podcast, so please be sure to download it later...

In the meantime, here's Michael presenting. More Michael.

Optimizing your Technology: Sharing your TechnoLust and Knowing When to Quit

As Beatrice says, It's 12:45 in South Bend, Indiana which means that it's time to start the next presentation.

Links from Lunch

As so often happens, some of the best conversation and questions happened at lunch. Next up for social software tools should be a way to have lunch virtually to allow everyone to participate!

I noted a few different sites/tools during lunch, so here are the URLs for them:

Catalog of del.icio.us tools: http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/02/absolutely-delicious-complete-tool.html

Experimental posting interface for del.icio.us (shows you others' tags): http://naeblis.cx/rtomayko/2005/01/12/experimental-delicious-thing-generator?username=pchere

Make your own multipost bookmarklet tool: http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/alan/marklet_maker.php

More later because Michael's speaking now!

cogdogblog

New find from Jenny - cogdogblog - and check out his tags on all the various social software tools, furl, connotea, 43 things, etc...

Here's Jenny...

Jenny presenting - courtesy of Flickr.

It's neat that Jenny and I ended up with many of the same examples - it shows those libraries deserve kudos and more of us need to start trying to see how these can work in our libraries and information centers

During Jenny's Presentation

It's so cool to be at an event where I can hear clicking and typing and its all ok!! People are flickr'ing and blogging and all sorts of amazing things to put into practice what we're all talking about today... just so cool!

Here's Candy Schwartz (one of Simmons library science professor-heros!) blogging (I think) in the audience

Tools in Collaborative Environments: Being a Part of the New Online World

Jenny Levine has just started and she's promised to talk even faster than Megan. Let's see those trackbacks.

A Critical Question

"Does your library have RSS Feeds?"

Jenny Levine

Blogging Megan's Presentation

Here's a link to my notes on Megan's presentation. As I'm hosting both this NEASIST weblog and my own personal weblog on the same Moveable Type instance, I expect to be able to trackback between the two. However, a Moveable Type extension I've installed to prevent spam called MTBlacklist is denying my attempts to trackback from http://www.metametadata.net/mt on the grounds of questionable content!!!

Metametadata's Notes

Blogging the event on My Gadget Life

Here's a link to my blog entries for today's event on my personal blog, My Gadget Life.

Megan's NEASIST Presentation as Blogged by Jenny

Megan sez:

90% of college students have cell phones! I’m curious how many people in this room have cell phones. Maybe I’ll remember to ask.

Technolust – I Want: the Vulcan Flipstart and the OQO! (Michael and I said, “I want one!” at the same time. 

Health and medical industries are driving mobile content.

Blogs are no longer cutting edge when they appear on the cover of BusinessWeek.

Showed Panlibus as a vendor blog – congrats to Talis for the mention. This is what blogging gets you as a business. 

Simmons webmaster has embedded Movable Type into the MySimmons portal (yay, Simmons webmaster!).

Great minds think alike – Megan includes screenshots from some of the blogs I have in my upcoming presentation!

When Megan said some people are declaring that email is dead because of RSS, someone in the audience applauded. 

Megan is an iTunes user – her screenshost show the app open in the taskbar! This makes Michael happy, I’m sure.

RSS feed mentions for Kansas City PL and Hennepin County Library. I will show these, too, as will Michael, I think, so conisder them the leaders in this area, best practices! This kind of attention is what you get when you take the lead.

Showing Talis’ Personalized RSS (PRSS) – another score for Talis!

Megan is showing Library ELF and she says it will work for you assuming your library participates. That’s not actually true, because as a user I can sign up my library without their knowledge. Scared yet? Providing RSS feeds of patron data yet?

Megan is also asking for RSS from Innovative!

Thank heavens she is covering podcasting, because I couldn’t fit it in to my already bulging presentation. Greg gets highlighted for his Open Stacks library podcast. Yay, Greg! This is what you get when you take a new topic, figure out how librarians can use it, and run with it!

Schoolhouse Rock gets a mention for podcasting - good for them!

Showing Aaron’s TFML audio review by teens. Yay, Aaron!

Wiki not Wookie – big laugh

Campuses Library Council at the University of South Carolina wiki gets a shoutout – yay CLC at USC!

What would batgirl do from U of Winnipeg wiki – I’ll show this, too! Yay, U of Winnipeg!

(Check Megan’s bibliography for all of the links.)

(I’ve just posted my first IM message to the wrong window for the day….)

Meredith’s wiki for the the Annual ALA conference – yay, Meredith! I’m going to be able to blow right through the blogs and wikis section of my talk; thanks, Megan! Now I can concentrate on the other parts. 

Showing some live reference interactions on IM and chat! Yay, Megan!!!!! She’s noting this as the primarcy communication method by college students and younger. So true. 

Showing HarperCollins.com service “IM to a friend.” Sweet!

She’s showing my Homer Township Public Library – yay, HTPLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Southern Illinois University’s DAWGTEL text messaging service – yay SIU!!

Library toolbars – nice! She’s not showing it, but she mentions her famous screenshot of every toolbar turned on.

Deskbars – pulling together everything for search on your desktop (email, IM transcripts, etc.)

Bookmarklets – starts with LibraryLookup. Yay, Jon Udell!

Too funny – Megan uses “The Da Vinci Code” as her book example, too!

Showing YahooQ button for your browser. Cool – I’m not familiar with this one. See, we’re all learning something new! Yahoo’s My Web and A9, too.

Social bookmark managers and metadata - she’s showing Aaron’s photos of new titles. Yay again for Aaron!

Question: know of any libraries linking to snippets of music to advertise their collections?
Megan: audio ebooks, music e-reserves

Question: is the Mac compatible with a lot of this stuff?
Megan: works well mostly for the web stuff, but not the desktop stuff

Great job, Megan!

Megan's toys

SPIM

Megan's talking about the use of SMS at academic institutions to communicate to students and faculty and potential for SPIM (spam for instant messaging). I already get SPIM from my mobile phone provider (movie polls, pope watch, random posts from people attending the Sundance Film Fest). I don't think I want to get anything from the Follett's people or the new class ring provider...

Morning coffee

Took some photos of my buddies out on the balcony before the event began. Used my Nokia cameraphone and uploaded to our Flickr account. See our "morningcoffee" tag.

So it begins...

Beatrice is introducing the day....

Tools in Personal Environments: A Taste of New Technologies

Megan Fox has just begun her session on cool new tools for libraries and librarians. Trackback away! And stay tuned for the podcast.

Wireless Lust and Disappointment

Providence College, our gracious host, has not made it round to providing wireless access on the 4th floor of the Feinstein building. Of course, your program committee wasn't going to let this stop us. The committee, speakers and other wireless experts have spent the last fifteen minutes frantically trying to cobble together wireless access via computer-to-computer networks. Unfortunately the attempt was a complete failure.

The College, as a substitute for wireless acess, has provided a lovely wired hub for anyone willing to string a cable all the way to their seat. This hub gives out it's own local ip addresses, but we can't get it to give us addresses for our computer-to-computer airport networks.

deli.cio.us tags for NEASIST

Many of the links in the bibliography are now available in Del.icio.us. Use the tag "NEASIST" to see what's there or to add to it.

bibliographies

Bibliographies are now available from our speakers:
Megan Fox (PDF, 110kb)
Michael Stephens (PDF, 122kb)

On picking up speakers

Rides

Make new friends, reduce global warming - carpool! This post provides a forum for folks looking for rides or driving partners from their area. Use/view the comments to communicate your situation and share your e-mail address for "off-line" follow-up or identify transportation matches for yourself. See you soon.