2014 Lib Tech Conference

The emergence of a wide variety of digitization technologies and access platforms have created new opportunities for fast, low-cost newspaper digitization--and new risks for long-term preservation and intellectual access to those papers. This session will describe the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub, the Minnesota Historical Society's long-range vision for aggregating, preserving, and providing access to Minnesota's digitized and born-digital newspapers. We will also discuss approaches to digitizing and preserving your own community's newspapers.

Have you ever wished a display of historical artifacts could be viewed after the exhibit comes down and goes back in boxes? The University Archivist and Cataloging Librarian from Eastern Michigan University will discuss their efforts to take a recent exhibit on the history of Track and Field at EMU and give it life after the exhibit closes using gaming technology. This is a test case for future exhibits on campus, including art exhibitions and historical tours. Project planning, successes and pitfalls will be discussed. Time will be allowed to interact with the exhibit.

Libraries have jumped on the User Experience bandwagon of late, rethinking our tools and services with a new focus on patron needs. But we still see things differently than our patrons. Where we see discrete services supporting our larger mission, patrons only see a confusing website. Where we test the usability of a single tool or service, patrons interact with multiple tools and services during one transaction.  Without a holistic view of the entire user experience, we spend our time solving the wrong problems. In this presentation, I will share our experiences at Grand Valley State University where we worked to break down “data silos” and improve our patrons’ overall experience.  Included will be practical tips for conducting tests of all kinds, and strategies for getting reluctant (or overworked!) colleagues on board.

At Winona State University’s Darrell K. Krueger Library, a New Student Orientation activity using the SCVNGR app, a QR Reader app and Piktochart infographics was implemented during Fall 2013. The Krueger Library Boot Camp provided students with an opportunity to navigate the library’s physical space, and familiarize themselves with the library’s policies and services by completing a self-paced, self-guided app-based activity. This presentation will walk through the process of envisioning, creating, troubleshooting and marketing the activity, as well as sharing participant feedback and ideas for improvement.

Creation of a social media plan and integration of social media account maintenance into the library’s workflow are crucial to an organization’s successful use of social media to connect with their community. This session will examine some of the major pitfalls in how libraries conceptualize their social media presence, and offer solutions to these problems. We will provide you with design-plan strategies for creating a solid foundation, which will not only revitalize your use of current platforms, but also leave you with tools for evaluation and incorporation of future social media outlets.   

Until recently, there has been a disappointing level of adoption of schema.org structured data in traditional core library systems such as catalogues and institutional repositories. But there is still hope! In this session, l'll briefly (re)introduce you to the schema.org  vocabulary as expressed in microdata and RDFa and convince you that it matters to libraries, explain how our W3 Schema Bib Extend group participates in the schema.org development process, identify library systems that now publish schema.org structured data by default, and explore emerging possibilities for enhancing libraries' presence on the web with structured data.

 

 

Disseminating, archiving, preserving, and even curating the digital results of grant-funded research is a growing user need for academic institutions. The University of Minnesota Libraries are piloting data curation services using existing tools and infrastructure, including our well-established institutional repository. By developing common workflows for accession, ingest, description, access, and preservation of digital data assets, we hope to better understand the variety and scale of our users' data, big and small. Our approach builds on the metadata expertise and institutional repository infrastructures already in place - making this approach a practical first step for many academic libraries.  

We’re building and improving tools and services all the time, but do you only develop for the “average” user or add things for “disabled” users? We all use “assistive” technology accessing information in a multitude of ways with different platforms, devices, etc. Let’s focus on providing web services that are accessible to everyone without it being onerous or ugly. The aim of this session is to get you thinking about what you can do to make web-based services more accessible for all from the beginning and with small amounts of effort.