MSU Emerging Technologies Summit 2010
To follow the comments on twitter, go to #msuet10
To listen to the sessions, please go to http://blogs.library.msstate.edu/emergingtech/?page_id=256
Friday September 17
Keynote: Post 2.0 Disintermediation :: Ubiquity :: Contextualization
with Jason Griffey
Disintermediation is happening as the Internet remove the middleman in a number of industries, like music, telecommunications, publishing, and video due to self-publishing and free tools. Libraries are also at risk of being a middle made between the users and finding information.
The functions of the library in society are to collect and preserve resources, describe resources to make them findable, to teach others to find information and reduce the fanatical burden on members of the community. It is a balancing act to do all these things and continue to be relevant in the age of the Internet.
The issue of the digital divide and libraries help in bridging that gap is not going to be a good reason for libraries to continue for much longer as access is a short term problem. Mobile access and the improvement of processing speeds plus Moores law when it comes to technology will give people the access they need. There are 4.1 billion cell phones in the world. In many cases people have more than one cell phone. We are going from 3G to 4 G phones with WiMax and LTE as further network developments. As Gibson said “The future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.” The technology to support most people in the world is here, just not everyone has purchased it yet.
Libraries also have been in the process of buying containers (books, computers) but now that a lot of content is digital, the model changes. For example ebooks really are set up for the individual consumer, not the institution or a collective. Some content works in multiple containers, like the Kindle books.
The model of access versus ownership has also changed over the years. Digital content often is licensed with rules in conflict with the libraries mission. The first sales doctrine has not been determined yet in the courts and one said a license can be transferred while another says no. Pirating is super easy, which is immediate access to an item you can’t afford, and you don’t have to go to the library to get a “free” copy.
The apple store sells more book apps then game apps, some food for thought.
So what is the library unique in? Reference, instruction, but no longer in providing content. There is still a place for the traditional repository library, like ARL libraries, but those that are smaller and more agile have the option to change their “business model” to be more flexibility and innovative with technology in order to exploit what is unique about libraries and not spend as much on the battle of providing the content.
Session 1: The Mobile Evolution: Reaching Patrons and Delivering Resources in the 21st Century Academic Library
with Clay Hill and Bobby Goff from MSU
Clay Hill is the website manager and Bobby Goff is the Library web services specialist at MSU. They shared their mobile interface of the library’s website. On their mobile site, they promoted their social networking sites (facebook, twitter, and youtube), the online catalog, ask a librarian, maps, directions, tours, hours, renewing books, and the mobile databases. They are also looking at adding QR codes in the library to give students access to the floor’s map and for other URL based information as it is faster to use the QR code then to type in an address on the phone.
My question, does Library H3lp have a mobile version of its chat???
There are pros and cons to developing a library mobile website versus an app. Apps will depend on the phone, so it is first of all important to know your communities as some carriers are used more than others in smaller communities, and to determine what specific services you want to develop into an app. Much like developing a browser toolbar, there will be a need to upgrade for each version update. A mobile website can be viewed by all phones, but just like different browsers, may look and react to each phone a little different.
They suggested that the homepage should detect if the device accessing it is mobile and send them to the mobile site, but to always have an option to get to the home website and that individual web page does not send people to the mobile site. Since mobile sites are meant to give a smaller set of resources meant for a mobile phone, your entire website does not have to have a mobile version. However, if someone does want to access a web page that was not converted to a mobile platform, but they have a smart phone that can view web pages, you want to make sure they can have access to that page.
Things to consider when optimizing your website for mobile technology: Speed of access of users (does your area provide good 3G or broadband?) What type of phones do your users have? Try to limit client side scripting and make the code as clean and efficient as possible.
There are web sites for shared code and MSU is willing to share their code. Look to Google Sheets and IUI for examples.
Session 2: Disability Experience in a Post 2.0 World
With Melissa Fortson
All of her links can be found at http://www.melissafortson.com/MSUET10
She pointed to a number of really great resources for both reminding the library of our responsibilities to peoples with disabilities as well as examples of how difficult certain technologies are online.
ALA Library Bill of Rights: Legal reasons to be ADA compliant are really the smaller reason to do it. If a website is designed for ADA compliance, it often is better designed for your general users, especially for mobile devises which cannot handle as much media and graphics.
She showed a video of someone who is blind giving a demonstration of using Jaws where his online world is basically full of lists and links.
Some of the technologies that are especially problematic are things like Captcha (a security check tool that requires people to type letters in a box from an image. The audio is perhaps harder than the visual to decipher for non-people with disabilities).
Javascript can be difficult to resize or is too dynamic so people have trouble accessing what they need. It doesn’t’ allow for tabbing either, which makes it that much longer to get where they need to go. In many cases the mobile version of a website is much easier for people with disabilities to use.
In social media, abbreviations and url shorteners are problematic for readers because it is not read like a word but just spelled out. And URL’s that are given without context will be hard for people to know where they are being sent.
WordPress, out of the box, is accessible, but some of the plug ins are not.
She has links for a number of validaters and successful web communication portals (for people with disabilities to help each other out).
Session 3: My session- Discovery based website navigation
It went ok, but I talked more about the development process then the application as our new website is not officially up and running.
Poster sessions
I attended all the poster sessions, which can be found in brief on the conference website. The one that was especially well done was called “The web beyond google: innovative search tools and their potential in reference services”. This poster came with a complete paper along with 6 search tools that I will investigate further:
Wolfram|Alpha: http://www.wolframalpha.com
Zuula: http://www.zuula.com
Wowd: Http://www.wowd.com
Cha Cha: Http://www.chacha.com
Duck Duck Go: http://www.duckduckgo.com
Silobreaker: http://www.silobreaker.com
Lauren in Libraryland » Post Topic » Mississippi State Emerging Technologies Summit said,
September 26, 2010 at 8:47 pm
[...] This post is about a week overdue, but I have really been going nonstop lately! I wanted to write about my experience at this conference by listing what I liked about the conference, a few take-aways, and some advice for library school students. I don’t plan to recap, since MSU librarians have done that beautifully on the conference blog. There is also a great conference recap at Technolust & Loathing. [...]
MSU Mentions | Melissa Fortson said,
July 28, 2011 at 4:46 pm
[...] The article includes a write-up of my 2010 Mississippi State University Libraries Emerging Technologies Summit presentation. While I can’t post the article here, it is available to JERL subscribers at Taylor & Francis Online. Laurel Sammonds, the MSU librarian who served as a reporter for the session, also posted a write-up on the Summit blog. Jacquelyn Marie Erdman also posted some notes on her site, Technolust & Loathing. [...]