Our webinar experience

Today Lutie Sheridan and I presented our webinar on Summon: “Web-scale discovery: the user experience brought” which was organised by Richard Levy from Serials Solutions. The subject of the webinar was the findings of our user studies on Serials Solutions' Summon conducted at Edith Cowan University Library during 2010 and 2011.

We had about 33 people online from all around the place, mainly in Australia. I think it went quite well, but it is a somewhat unreal experience talking into the phone to 30+ people.

You need to be skilled at multitasking to do one of these things. The speaker-phone did not work, so we had to pass the phone back and forth to present the slides, and then later to answer questions. The questions appeared as text in the chat box and Richard repeated them to us as well.

Lutie commented that it was like talking on the phone when you get no "ah-ha" comments coming back at you...no verbal or visual cues. Another colleague mentioned having once done a phone job interview with a panel of interviewers firing questions and you have no visual cues.

Later I found out that some people were unable to log in. It’s always tricky with the technology in these events.

Richard Levy of Serials Solutions recorded the whole presentation including questions and responses. I believe he will be making it available at some stage.

My advice if you decide to do a webinar as presenter: prepare, check out the technology before hand and try to RELAX and have fun with it!!

Webinar on Summon this week

This blog post is just a little plug for our upcoming webinar on Thursday 23rd June 2011 at 11am Sydney time.

The topic of the webinar is the findings of our user studies on Serials Solutions' Summon conducted during 2010 and 2011

Web-scale discovery: user experience brought to you by Serials Solutions and Julia Gross and Lutie Sheridan from Edith Cowan University.

This is a free event and you can register at http://tinyurl.com/3tuwq6x

Fingers crossed the technology will work. We have had a few runs though and all is go position.

CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia presentation on Summon

Many of the presentations from the recent CCA-EDUCAUSE Australasia Sydney conference are now on the Conference program website.

The full list of presentations, posters and so forth is here

We gave a presentation on the usability studies conducted during 2010 and 2011 of the Serials Solutions Web scale discovery product, Summon. One key finding was that although students found the product easy to use, their skills at sifting through the results screens were not so good.

There is no full paper of the Summon presentation, however an article will be published this month's New Library World. More of that soon.

Discovering Scholarly Resources

View more presentations from Julia Gross

Our students take to web scale discovery

Library OneSearch

Earlier this year we did a usability study of our new web scale discovery product, Summon.This is a very brief presentation I did on the study's findings during ECU Research Week in August 2010.

The full paper detailing all the findings, has been submitted by Lutie Sheridan and I and is expected to be published by Emerald Publishing later in 2010

View more presentations from Julia Gross.

Art Exhibition launch in the library

The Mount Lawley Campus library has an lovely exhibition area called "Breathing Space", which is an ideal spot for showcasing local art from our students and staff. This week there was a launch of art works from visual artist, Catherine Gomersall entitled "Body Bags: I am a Trash Bag"

The series of colour photographic prints explore the “trash bag” as a metaphor for a particular category of emotion: “bad” ones.

Learning spaces: students tell us what they think

The ECU Library’s learning spaces photo competition attracted some interest from ECU students when it ran during October 2009.

We were asking students to take photos of what they considered “good” and “bad” learning spaces around the campuses and to give us some reasons why they made their choice. Photos were taken of a range of areas such as e-labs, libraries, teaching spaces and outdoor areas on all campuses: Joondalup, Bunbury and Mount Lawley.

Adrianna Pracas, a final year Teacher Education student from Mount Lawley Campus was the lucky winner of teh photo competition. Dan Archibald, University Librarian, presented the iPod Touch prize at a morning tea function. Thanks to all students who participated.

This is a small part of a much bigger ALTC Project: Retrofitting university learning spaces: from teaching spaces to learning spaces. Queensland University of Technology is leading the project, joined by Charles Darwin University and Edith Cowan University.

The outcome of the project, including student photos and comments, will inform the redesign of learning spaces and contribute to developing an integrated campus learning environment.

Our Library Facebook page - pros and cons

Many libraries have a Facebook page where they post library information, announce special events and respond to queries. Anyone can become a “fan” of the Library Facebook page if they are already on Facebook. Those who are not already on Facebook will receive a link, inviting them to join up. Pages are free, however the option of placing paid advertisements is also available.

What has been our library's experience with the Facebook page?

We started the Edith Cowan University Library Facebook page back in March 2008 and now, 15 months later, we have 300 fans. Initially we took the minimalist approach and kept the Facebook wall locked down, as we were not wanting to devote too much staff time to page maintenance. We opened the wall in mid 2008, and we find we do get some messages from our students there.

What Benefits can a library Facebook page deliver?

What I like about the Facebook page is you can you can run an RSS feed into your page, so all our blog posts come up there. You can add videos and photos to give more of a presence. If you are tech savvy you can write a Facebook catalogue search widget. Database search widgets won't work unless you adjust authenication settings. Since June 2009 Facebook page owners have been able to claim their organsiational name for the page, so this will help with brand recognition. We are now www.facebook.com/ECU.Library. Facebook also provides statistics so you can get some good demographics on your fans.

Any Downside?

What I don’t like about the Facebook page, is the lack of control over the interface and the closed network (i.e you need to be a Facebook member to access the site). Facebook’s interface has had two new revamps over the last 15 months and each time we needed to take stock. The latest design gives a more Twitter feel to the pages which we are now trying to exploit.

Where to now?

We probably need to market the Facebook page more and use some of the functionality it does provide. 15 months down the track we are still exploring ways to engage with our fans and keep them coming back.

Was it worth the effort?

Given that it did not take a lot of setting up I would say the return on investment has been OK, but I would not throw huge resources into it. I view it rather as a test bed which will give us a glimpse into future opportunities for libraries to use social media to connect with customers. Facebook may not the best medium for a university library to reach students. It’s just one of many social media options around and worth investigating and we know our students love it. Also, the exercise of setting up a page can expose library staff to social networking media and help them learn new skills ... until the next big thing comes along.

In receipt of Vice-Chancellor's Citation

That photo is a bit too formal, but nevertheless...

great news, I am a member of the ECU Lbrary team of five who are in receipt of the Vice-Chancellor's Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for 2009.

the wording of the citation is:

For a sustained contribution to the improvement of teaching and learning through the provision of innovative and effective learning spaces and library services

This is on behalf of the whole library and has been several years in the making, steadily gathering evidence, interviewing staff and students and implementing many changes.

Details of all the award winners are on the ECU Website

EBL on your iPhone

EBL (Electronic Book Library) titles can be downloaded to the Sony Reader, but now also EBL’s new reader is already accessible on an iPhone and iPod Touch?

Users can access EBL titles on their iPhone or iPod Touch through the standard EBL interface. In fact, EBL's online reader will render the full book in just about any mobile browser.

And news just in… downloading EBL ebooks to the iPhone/iPod Touch is soon to follow. Adobe have just announced a partnership with Stanza Reader, the reader application designed for the iPhone. Read more on the EBL blog

This is really setting the scene for a mobile learning future.

Edith Cowan University (ECU) has had the whole EBL catalogue loaded into its OPAC for 2 years now. In this demand driven acquisitions model, our users have book choice within their control. Budget permitting, of course.

Search ECU catalogue from your Google Toolbar

Do you already use the Google toolbar? If so, you can now add an ECU library catalogue search button to your Google toolbar. This brings the library catalogue search several clicks closer and means you don't need to go into the library website to find the catalogue and run your keyword search.

The Google Toolbar is an Internet browser toolbar available for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. It can be downloaded from here

To find out more about how to set up the catalogue search in your toolbar check out the ECU library blog

Another similar feature is the iGoogle catalogue gadget for searching the library catalogue which I wrote about a few months back.

Google gadget for ECU Library catalogue

I wrote in a previous post about the benefits of Google gadgets for making library catalogue searching available outside the library's website.

Now we have have an ECU Library catalogue gadget which can be loaded to your iGoogle page. The Google gadget is available from http://www.ecu.edu.au/library/widgets/add_gadget.html.
You can also test out the gadget from this page.
Alternatively, you can add the ECU Library catalogue gadget from within your iGoogle page. Click on the 'Add stuff' link, and search for ECU Library. Then follow instructions to add the gadget to your iGoogle page.

Library 2.0 Revisited at ECU in July

Following up on the staff survey outlined in my previous post, on what sort of library 2.0 training staff wanted, we are running two ECU Library 2.0 training days this July 2008.

We have planned the two half days through our wiki: "Library 2.0 Revisited". The two days will provide a chance for Library 2.0 newbies to get some exposure to the new technologies.

Most of the staff running the session completed the 23 things Training in 2007. That training was run through the ECU Learning 2.0 blog

Using Flickr to build relationships and promote your library

Michael Stephens' second step in creating a hyperlinked library is to incorporate Flickr images, so your library photos can be linked in to many Web 2.0 applications. It helps to have a ready pool of available images. Flickr is an excellent way to promote your library, to your stakeholders and the wider world.

At ECU, our marketing section has a photo library, but good library photos are pretty scarce. Also we don't have license approval for putting the ECU marketing photos on Flickr. So we are looking to build our own collection of photos to promote the library. We need to be mindful of going through all the correct protocols and gaining written permission, when photographing of students or staff.

We have started our ECU Flickr photo site and hope to integrate this with other Web 2.0 applications as we go along.

We have lift-off ... Facebook at ECU Library

Today we managed a successful "soft launch" of our new ECU Library Facebook page.

Thanks to Lutie Sheridan, who did most of the work and me, who kept asking her to change things around. We've decided to "suck it and see". This is all so new, we really don't know how and if these social network sites can be used to connect with out student users. How will they find us? What will they expect?

If you have any thoughts, advice, feedback on library Facebook pages, then please post me a message.

ECU Library blog goes live

Finally, after much effort behind the scenes, the new ECU Library blog will go live next week.

The blog's tag line is "Keeping you up-to-date with information about the library, resources and happenings..."