WAPL - Have You Heard About ...

I blogged this program on my personal page. It does include at least one editorial comment. The quick way to see what was talked about is to visit the del.icio.us page set up for this presentation.

WAPL - Continuing Education in Your Pajamas-New Technologies Bring New Opportunities

John DeBacher started with a great visual image for the title of the program. I saw him in the hall in advance to capture this photo...he actually wore this to the introduce the program.

The first presenter was Anna Palmer from the library school at UW-Madison. There are still three courses which require physical presence on campus. The electives can be done online. Courses are available before or after starting the program. If you register as a "special student" the cost is half the regular price.

The school offers continuing education courses including courses for the Library Director Certification Program. CED credits are cheaper and are graded on a pass/fail basis. They use the same software for CE and online courses. They use Desire to Learn (D2L) which is branded with Learn Wisconsin.

Anna demonstrated with a course called "Core Elements of Children's Services." [I have a close friend who has taught using D2L, and I have seen both the student and instructor side.] It is asynchronous teaching with assignments and deadlines. It is web based and very intuitive. There is technology support for both students and instructors. There is a phone help desk from 6 am to 1 am. It does require 56K connection, Windows 98 or better.

The University offers "Education to Go" classes are skill specific. Cost is $85, and there are about 75 courses offered. All are 6 weeks long and the start once a month. They are offered through an outside vendor. They do have interactive elements and some of the structure is similar to the D2L structure. It does have a final exam which is required to receive credits for the course.

Bob Bocher talked about the tools which DPI provides. Bob did not appear in pajamas (since he wears none). The product the state uses is from Sonic Fpundry called MediaSite. The tool synchronizes the view with the sound. It is real time, and it is archival. The site has about 15 presentations included on the site. It requires a specialized PC and camera to produce programs. The PC includes the software. It takes some time to train staff to do the technology issues to schedule and connect, plus uploading PowerPoint. It is helpful to have two people: one to present and one to run the hardware.

Bob showed a demonstration of an erate training program. The state has a license, and hosts them on their own site. For many other customers the vendor hosts the program. The program is not as flexible. There is no chat or other interactivity.

John DeBacher showed WebJunction. He particularly plugged the Rural Sustainability aspect of the project. It does require speakers/headphones and a microphone is good. (South Central found inexpensive ones for about $5.) John then logged into an archived presentation. He also whistled the theme from Jeopardy while it loaded. He then showed the courses section of the website. The state counts these opportunities as continuing education for certification purposes.

Jean Anderson from South Central Library System talked about OPAL. They have a site license for 50 people, but can ask Tom Peters for more space, and there is an auditorium which can host large crowds. She showed it on the large screen, including some input from staff back in Madison at the SCLS office.

WAAL 2008: Gary Price keynote

Gary Price

• Presentation: http://tinyurl.com/4xqhqn
• ResourceShelf.com
• Started this site
• Updated daily, even during his honeymoon!
• Calls himself an "intropreneur"
• It's one thing to have a website, and it's another thing to keep people coming to your website
• RSS isn't as widely-used as people think it is - many people don't know what it is or how to use it
• I send out a weekly email reminder - everyone still knows what it is
• 25-50 names added to email list a week - up to 50,000 subscribers (?)
• Information overload
• Docuticker.com
• Started this site, maintained by Shirl Kennedy
• Reports from think tanks, government agencies, universities, etc.
• Also updated daily, with weekly e-mail reminders
• People tell me that the only reason they come is the teaser email message: "This is a little bit of what we've posted this week..."
• Both sites popular with journalists
• Comes down to using the right tool at the right time: online tools, books, licensed databases
• Many people have no idea what the library of today or future has to offer
• "Go to the library" is important message, but not the only one
• Share your experiences:
• UW Sheboygan - instruction for Philosophy 101 class, student trying to cite sources, and all were ".com" websites, and the assignment called for books and articles. Were you in my class? Yeah, but I knew where I was going to get my sources.
• Is it the instructors we need to get to?
• UW Stout - depends on instructor. If they emphasize use variety of sources, then students will do it. Sometimes, instructors say I didn't even know you had this.
• Can you use something you don't even know about?
• Comment: Instructors are astounded, and then make their assignments more appropriate.
• What does this mean in the long term? For libraries, licensed tools, companies?
• Audience: If become an instructor, should take a "library course"
• Gary: They're just as Googlified as anyone else?
• Audience: Correct. In grad school, I surveyed high school teachers, and none of them had library training, only knew from being little kids - no one has been teaching the teachers.
• I talked to teachers, and they're getting into turf wars with public libraries, which offer databases. Don't talk to each other. Money wasted.
• Audience: Bigger problem. Teaching distance education for grad school. Assigned annotated bibliography, and grad students only sent websites. They "couldn't find anything"
• Gary: Same thing happened to me. They don't know what their academic library can do for them.
• Audience: I work at the public library in Manitowoc. College students come in and they don't know the difference. I got this at school, can I get it again. Customers are the same. They don't understand what we're doing.
• I don't understand database vendors - they don't help us with their marketing know-how to get to end-users. Told they're afraid of placing ads in school newspapers because they'll step on librarians' toes.
• Told to keep secret, because if too many people use them, vendors will raise prices, and then we won't have any access.
• Once they sell database, should do more to support use of it. Librarians also need to do a better job of marketing - I've seen "Come use EBSCOHost" - federated searching solution?
• BadgerNet is a best-kept secret in Wisconsin
• Audience: Difficult time working with students - convince them to struggle as librarian is struggling.
• Gary: 45 million things in Proquest, ABI, etc. - makes difficult. Remove duplicates. End user doesn't care where it comes from (vendor).
• Audience: Better term than fee-based database?
• Gary: Stuff you're not going to find in Google.
• If we do things RIGHT, we get one of the most valuable commodities that everyone wants - we can save time, effort and aggravation finding the information they need.
• I don't know what Web2.0 means - where do they get these names? some are junk, but we don't know what 2.0 means either.
• KillerStartups.com - reviews the good and bad
• Discussion/message boards are still big, in addition to blogs - some are moderated, without the spam
• Blogpulse - like best, Nielsen Buzz Metrics
• Bloglines
• Technorati
• I'm running Windows and Apple at the same time - had to send back Ask.com computers, I'm addicted to Windows but I wanted an Apple so badly, so got MacBook Pro with VMware Fusion to run both OS's
• Market Research Library - U.S. Commercial Service
• Comment: this was online, then only supposed to be StatsBase, but now it looks like it's back for free
• CiteSeerX - over 10 years - think Google Scholar, but just IT/CS - new interface
• "Autonomous citation indexing"
• Over a million citations - IEEE paper - "My CiteSeer / MetaCart" - list by # cites
• From Penn State U.
• Gotta be backing things up remotely - I learned the hard (and heart) way - your life can feel like it's about to be over
• I use Mozy $100/year for 3 hard drives - every night, automatically to Utah
• Teaching people how to back things up could be an entire instruction session from the libraries
• I've had my hard drive fail on me, and $3,700 later, the data came back
• VTuner and PublicRadioFan.com - trend - multimedia material - in lower grades can learn a language this way
• PRF - what's playing on public radio around the world? listen online or download podcasts.
• I've been told that I could be Michael Feldman's second or third cousin
• CoolIris
• Firefox users? Lots of people. I'm a huge users, so many addons.
• "Price is my name. Free is my game."
• MelissaData - lookups - demographics
• MobiTV
• Comment: Why search blogosphere?
• Gary: Find out what people are talking about, including latest publications
• Topix - 50,000+ mainstream news sources - more than Google News - local and browsable - metrics (?)
• Used to work for chain of newspapers around Chicago called Pioneer Press - we used to learn about how ads placed near articles can change intention - online it's automatic, so you get "Anti-Christ" ads on "Pope" search
• News Now - 31,000 sources, from UK but global news - by subject - auto refresh with new content - virtual news ticker
• Comment: Are sources lasting? here today, gone tomorrow?
• Gary: I try to show things that I think will be around - but alot of Web2.0 funding is from venture capital - they want to know "what's your endgame?" - and that may be to get bought out by Google, etc.
• 99% of Google's revenue is from ads on side of pages, or syndicated to other sites (like NYT)
• Google still a phenomenal search engine
• people have problems with busy Yahoo homepage - now have search.yahoo.com, looks like Google
• Aerial imagery - TerraFly from FL Intl U. - around before Google Earth - great data
• MS Birdseye imagery is remarkable
• MS also digitizing books
• MS Live Search Academic - Google Scholar alternative - I'm sure linking will come in future -
• G Scholar - what's the actual version that's published? Questionable.
• SearchPickr - for different kinds of searches - one-stop search
• "Is this new for everyone? Anyone using this? Good, there's x new resources."
• CustomizeGoogle.com - lots of options - including removing ads! - Search in Google, then run same search on other engines
• What happens when more and more people remove ads from the results page?
• Google used to have 8 ads per page - now up to 11
• Jux2 - compare 2 search engines at one time - what ONLY google, yahoo, MSN found
• Thumbshots - graphic comparison of search results
• Exalead - from France, but in English - I like how results are presented - which can be of huge value to end user - point and click limits
• Clusty - what you know, and what you don't know - dynamically clusters results using words on page (not pre-built categories)
• ClusterMed - PubMed is fielded searching, so allows lots of clusters
• Amazon "Search inside the book" - using to find new books? - metrics - readability - # characters, fun stats (words per dollar/ounce) - concordance of frequently used words - around a little longer than Google Books - determined by publisher for new books (not retrospective)
• The Online Books Page - Univ of PA - full text, out of copyright, this person is completely out of his mind (tons added every day)
• ChaCha - 800-2-chacha - Indiana Univ. - live voice-activated searching - response by text messaging - next generation virtual reference - all results have to come from open web, which is where we started our discussion... - focus on casual user - bar bets
• Pandora - shows power and importance of good metadata - instruments, meter, etc. - several thousand musicians and musicologists to listen to tracks and tag - find related music
• What is the deep/invisible web in 2008? (Wrote book 7 years ago) - General search engines weren't indexing much material - better, but invisible web is bigger than it was then - if it's not in first 5-6 results, may as well be invisible to user - need to show advanced searching and variety of searches and share individualized resources with people who can use them [liaison]
• 85% people don't go to 2nd search results page
• Search engines are also huge marketing tools - spammers do what they can - some optimizers do it above board (white hats) - that's why good to use multiple
• most people do simple searches - used to be 2, now 2.8-3 words on average
• Spock - people searching -
• quality of information is what I worry about - anyone can go in and manipulate - huge on wikipedia
• Zoominfo - takes open web info and builds dossiers - I never worked for Ask S.A, I worked for Ask.com. Ask S.A sells RFID.
• Spokeo - track your online social network friends across 22 networks
• Rubble88 = Gary Price
• HouseFront - also works on mobile - nosy neighbor tool - data by property address - have blog: celebrity houses for sale with aerial views