Group items tagged

PDF or Epub: "Service design is a process that examines the relationship between those who use a service and the service environment. By focusing on and making improvements to the points at which users interact with other people or the environment, service design enables an organization to run smoothly, provide the best service to its users, and reduce the kind of situations that that can generate complaints. It has been effective in traditional customer-centric industries like retail and hospitality and is now seeing use in areas like healthcare, public services, and educational services. Even as it leads to improvements in services and spaces, service design maximizes limited resources and increases accountability, and many of these benefits bear directly on the processes and spaces designed for learning."

  "Old models of library operation may disappear, but that does not mean they can't be replaced.  Academic libraries' central book model is temporarily insulated by high prices, but change will come just the same.  The time provided by this insulation should be used to explore sources of content like local special collections with clear ownership and distribution rights.  Without restrictions like those imposed by many third party vendors, special collections can provide a proving ground for next generation interfaces and services. This home-grown expertise within libraries can then be applied on a wider basis in the future.                 The examples and efforts discussed in this column share one thing at their core, and that is that they are services made by libraries, for libraries.  As a collective institution, libraries have great expertise in building sustainable preservation systems capable of lasting many years.  Third party vendors do not have a proven track record on building long term preservation systems for electronic resources at this point in time.  By placing our trust, funds, and collections in the hands of those third parties we turn libraries into middlemen.  For the short term gain of providing easy access to next generation library services, we risk disintermediation by those vendors and removal from the service equation entirely.  Libraries of all types and sizes can look inward and grow from our strengths.  Major publishers and content providers aren't likely to allow new services with the same scope libraries enjoyed in the past.  Fortunately, special collections and collaborative efforts are accessible to even the smallest library as perfect opportunities for gaining relevant experience and expertise.  By basing that experience and expertise on homegrown services built by and for libraries, they can ensure a sustainable future of next generation services."

"North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries and its Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications (DELTA) are partnering with strategic consultants brightspot strategy and DEGW to design, share, and promote an updated model for institutions to plan and support technology-rich informal learning spaces. This Learning Space Toolkit will include a roadmap to guide the process along with tools and techniques for assessing needs, understanding technology, describing spaces, planning and delivering support services, and assembling space, technology, and services to meet needs, even as they change."

"Academic libraries that choose to emphasize services that are relevant in a digital world strike the authors as the most likely to find fertile ground." Academic libraries that choose to emphasize services that are relevant in a digital world strike the authors as the most likely to find fertile ground. They would be entering a realm of many opportunities; a realm characterized by rapid and discontinuous shifts. These institutions would be well advised to begin the process now. The trend-line is clear and the shift to a digital environment has tremendous momentum. Libraries cannot afford to wait until the smoke has cleared and the digital revolution is complete to take action. First the risk of being subordinated to more nimble entities within (and perhaps outside of) the academy is significant. Libraries will be hard pressed to reclaim lost territory once others fulfill these roles successfully. Second, the shift to a predominantly digital environment began more than a decade ago, shows no sign of slowing, and is creating a cascade of associated changes.

nstitute of Museum and Library Services announce the publication of "Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture." The report details the events of the October, 2011 convening of fifty-eight library, museum, and cultural heritage leaders from thirty-one countries. Together, the participants developed a set of recommendations to help libraries and museums embrace new possibilities for public engagement that are made possible by societal and technological change. The deliberations identified "imperatives for the future" including accepting the notion of democratic access, placing a major emphasis on public value and impact, and embracing lifelong learning.

"The following is an alphabetical list of library web pages that list experimental, beta, or trial web tools and services."

There's an old saying: give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he'll die from mercury poisoning because you can't survive on nothing but fish. Or something like that. I never was any good at proverbs.

ebrary, a ProQuest business and leading provider of e-books and research technology, today announced that the results of its survey of more than 1,000 librarians regarding e-book mobile and offline access is now publicly available online.  Anyone may register to receive the full results along with a paper authored by Dr. Allen McKiel, Dean of Library Services at Western Oregon University, at http://www.tfaforms.com/222151

"For libraries, it's one of the biggest conundrums of our time. To be the library your patrons want and need you to be, you've got to be high-tech, offering fast, IT-integrated services people can't get on their own. Yet to do this, you have to spend money...money you do not have in your budget."

Not for the workshop but for the link suggestions.

Ebook of research report from ACRL about how students use libraries. "we were interested in how students write their research papers and what services, resources, and facilities would be most useful to them"

"UC Berkeley - Search, Google, and Life - Guest Lecturers Sergey Brin, Bradley Horowitz, Jason Schultz, and more - This free course from the University of California at Berkeley gives you an opportunity to sit in on some of the greatest minds in modern technology as they discuss how their products, services, and companies play a major role in shaping the way we obtain information, process it, and view the world. They also discuss how they came to be involved in those technologies, and how search and search engines work and have changed the internet as we know it."

SirsiDynix CEO interviewed by LJ

Our major findings are as follows: 1. During one of the busiest times of the academic year, the students we interviewed were mainly using different IT devices to stay in touch with their friends while they were in the campus library. In the hour before we interviewed them, 81% of the students in our sample had checked for new messages (e.g., email, Facebook, IMs, texts). 2. At the same time, many of the same respondents who said they had checked for messages had also prepared assignments for submission (60%), studied and reviewed materials for class (52%), and satisfied personal curiosity with a computer search (e.g., sports score, news, gossip) (45%). 3. Despite the pressing need to complete assignments at crunch time, few respondents reported having used the full range of library resources and/or services during the previous hour. Many more respondents said they had used library equipment (39%) such as computers and printers than anything else, including scholarly research databases (11%), library books (9%), face-to-face reference (5%), and/or online reference (2%). 4. Overall, we found most respondents (85%) could be classified as "light" technology users. These were students who used "only" one or two IT devices primarily in support of coursework and, to a lesser extent, communication. The most frequent combination (40%) of devices being used was a cell phone (including smart phones) with a personally owned laptop computer while they were in the library. In stark contrast, only 8% of the sample could be classified as "heavy" technology users. 5. For over half the sample, a personally owned laptop (58%) was the primary-most essential-device in use at the time of the interview. A smaller percentage of respondents (35%) were using a library desktop computer. 6. More than any other combination of applications, respondents had both a Web browser and a word processing program open at the same time (47%) while they were in the library. 7. Despi

A short class on using library services, with just one assignment and a quiz; lots of information in the syllabus. (example using Canvas from Instructure)

Cloud computing comes in several different forms and this article documents how service, platform, and infrastructure forms of cloud computing have been used to serve library needs. Following an overview of these uses the article discusses the experience of one library in migrating IT infrastructure to a cloud environment and concludes with a model for assessing cloud computing.

"This site is intended to help library web developers decide how to label key resources and services in such a way that most users can understand them well enough to make productive choices. It serves as a clearinghouse of usability test data evaluating t

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science celebrated the ending of its 80th anniversary year by taking a forward look at the future of our field and its graduates. The Information Professionals 2050 (IP 2050) Conference brought in information and library science leaders who discussed key issues related to future visions, skills and values. Themes of the day included the areas of the 1) Information Industry, 2) Libraries and Archives, 3) Education and 4) Information Trends. The contributors are thought leaders of our profession and included: * Marshall Breeding, director for Innovative Technologies and Research, Vanderbilt University Libraries * Anne Caputo, executive director, Dow Jones' Learning and Information Professional Programs * Bonnie Carroll, president, International Information Associates * Mary Chute, deputy director for Libraries, Institute for Museum and Library Services * Lorcan Dempsey, vice president and chief strategist, OCLC * Michael Eisenberg, professor and dean emeritus, University of Washington School of Information * Buck Goldstein, University entrepreneur in residence and professor of practice, Department of Economics University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * William Graves, senior vice president, Academic Strategy at Ellucian * Elizabeth Liddy, dean and trustee professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies * Charles Lowry, executive director, Association for Research Libraries * Joanne Marshall, alumni distinguished professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * Nancy Roderer, director, Johns Hopkins University Welch Medical Library * Roger Schonfeld, director of research, Ithaka * David Silver, associate professor, University of San Francisco * Duncan Smith, co-founder, Novelist (EBSCO Publishing) Moderators included, * Susan Nutter, vice provost and director of Libraries, North Carolina State University * Sarah Michalak, university librarian and associate prov