CMSreORG

The CMSreORG project combines two projects in one. It is a re-evaluation of our current web authoring methods with the view of adopting a Content Management System (CMS). It is also, more importantly, a re-organization (reORG) of the current website, exploring how it can be best shaped to allow our diverse user audience to get the most out of the web services delivered by the Library.

The Library is currently considering adopting Rhythmyx, the college’s CMS, hosted by Corporate Affairs. Should it be adopted, it will help library staff to manage content reduplicated in many pages across the site. Also, content can be quickly ‘re-purposed’ in different formats. For instance, this article, once entered into the CMS, could output to the bulletin, an item on a news page and into a news archive. It will replace Dreamweaver as a web-authoring tool, offering an easier method of authoring that requires no HTML experience. Expirery dates can be set to allow staff to monitor their pages more effectively and allow for a scheduled method for delivering news and RSS. When it comes to creating page content, Rhythmyx will allow e-services to set up a more structured ‘work-flow’ by assigning particular roles to library staff.

These advantages are met by challenges that will require technical experimentation and ongoing communication with the vendors, who market Rhythmyx as adaptable ‘enterprise’ software aimed at Higher Education. It is undecided how Rhythmyx will allow us to integrate our dynamic web services, such as the Catalogue and MetaLib. It is unclear if it will be ‘future-compatible’ with Vertical Search products, like Ex-Libris’ Primo, which are more concerned with bringing together and delivering remote and local resources in a single search than managing local content. Taking into account these challenges, we aim to make a decision on Rhythmyx within the next month after staff consultation.

While contemplating how to improve web-authoring for staff, we are simultaneously getting to grips with the requirements of our website audience. We aim, as the shortly to be published Project Initiation Document will specify, “to adopt a more user centred approach to the navigation and the structure of our website”. Almost every aspect of how we present library web services with regards to content, look and feel and accessibility are within the scope for change.

Central to this project is a working group, whose main task is to call together key staff members for consultation as issues arise within the project schedule. However, this is fundamentally a user driven project. We will soon be hosting user feedback evaluation sessions to determine whether our current notions and perceived problems with regard to the site are on the right track. We are also considering the engagement of a specialist consultant to produce a neutral and expert view of our services and requirements.

Sid’s blog

Our very own Sid has his very own blog, on which he recently explained in a simple fashion what flash and virtual memory are and how a USB can improve the performance of your PC.

http://sidlid.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-use-for-usb-stick.html

Is this why I should refrain from pulling my USB out without following the safely remove hardware procedure?

Janet Talk: Instant Collaboration and voice over IP for HE

At UCISA conference June and I were talking over lunch one day with a sales representative from Damovo, a business communications company specialising in voice of IP services. We got onto discussing telephony systems, messaging and voice over IP. I mentioned that one of my colleague is keen to set up skype for phone calls and that I find instant messaging a real benefit for quick interactions with work colleagues. The Damovo rep mentioned that Janet Talk is a new initiative being launched soon for the Janet community as a whole. Although I’m keen to explore the messaging available in GroupWise it will be restricted to our department. A community approach to communication services would seem to make sense for team working and collaboration services, not just for us but for students and researchers. Clearly this not an emerging technology but it sounds like an innovation to apply the ‘social’ technology to an entire community.

http://www.ja.net/development/talk.html

http://www.ja.net/development/voip.html

Blogs and wikis…

Discussion at a meeting earlier this week about whether something would be best communicated to Library staff via a blog, wiki or even old-fashioned email, reminded me of this post on the Ubiquitous Librarian’s blog about using Clearspace software for this very purpose. Clearspace is enterprise collaboration/knowledge management software, and incorporates blogs, wikis, announcements, file sharing, and message boards, amongst other features.

dapper is the online web scraper

What a wonderful tool dapper is. This is apparently web 3.0, the webs new phase of maturity that will blossom eventually to the semantic web. It’s all about re-using open data from large and famous sites in a more structured and intelligent context. Here is a good but old article on such:

Web 3.0: When Websites Become Web Services

Dapper allows any webmaster to perform very basic web scraping, which will be familiar process to those who enjoy studying search engines or even Metlib. Dapper qua. Web scraping simply selects, collects and re-formats html content from a site, rendering it re-usable for different purposes. This is great for databases: I can now see a quick way of transferring data from the exam papers website into a PHP MySQL. This will open it up from departments to use the data in their own applications. Also, it could be a great starting point for stripping our old website for the forthcoming CMS migration. I strongly advise everyone to investigate this and come up with some ideas on how we might use it.

Drift through the music!

Here’s an interesting one: Musicovery. Give it a think: can you imagine something like this applied to a library/information browse scenario?

Systems: III Encore

There seems to be quite a lot of discord on the SirsiD lists in the US Unicorn world regarding iLink, EPS (SirsiD’s portal frontend) and futures. A number of them have referred to something called Encore, from Innovative, which I’d not come across (http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html).

Looks like Encore is not included in III’s standard OPEC but has to be bought add-on even by existing III libraries. Looking at the examples below, it would appear the underlying OPACs remain available for advanced searching. Also perhaps slightly disappointing is Encore’s use of a tag cloud to refine, rather than extend, searching.

III’s Encore page isn’t particularly forthcoming but it does claim 50 recent sales, including to Aleph and Voyager libraries and to UK libraries. I couldn’t find any UK ones but there’s one in Nashville that looks quite interesting. Go to Nashville Public Library and tell me what you think. One at Westerville also looks pretty well out of the box.

Worth looking at?

New breed of OPACs

Rummaging around the web - as you do - I came across a company called Endeca offering new ways of searching and presenting data in a whole range of industries. This led me to look at the NCSU catalogue and I liked what I saw. Easy searching and results presented in a way that allows refinement. NCSU are a Sirsi Unicorn customer which is why it caught my attention.

What Endeca says about itself.

“Endeca for Libraries is the most effective way for students, faculty and other members of the library community to find the book or resource they need and to discover new information they didn’t even know the library owned. That’s why North Carolina State University saw an increase of 240% in keyword searching after deploying Endeca. Endeca’s superior search integrated with the patented Guided Summarization experience encourages exploration and discovery. That experience increases usage of the library’s resources, increases re-circulation, and increases usage of legacy library collections.” http://endeca.com/byIndustry/media/libraries.html

See also http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca/ for publications and presentations about the implementation of the OPAC.

Seeing this reminded me of another library browser that a colleague brought to my attention some time ago. The AquaBrowser is far more visually exciting. Check out the Dumfries and Gallloway catalogue . http://library.dumgal.gov.uk/abl/

What AquaBrowser says about itself.

“AquaBrowser Library’s capabilities transcend the limits of conventional OPAC searching. Its search front-end finds items using associations, context, and spelling alternatives automatically generated from your library’s catalog. AquaBrowser Library offers the first progressively interactive searching experience your users have ever encountered.” http://www.medialab.nl/?page=aquabrowserlibrary/overview

Does anyone know why the penetration of these browsers is so small in UK libraries?

mediaWiki for subject guides

Meredith Farkas relates how she and her colleagues have used media wiki to present subject guides to their users. She makes an interesting point that students use a task-based approach rather than a general subject approach. I certainly identify with this as a perpetual student myself; whether learning about web technologies or languages.

Meredith Farkas

…I love that the guides are searchable and that we can assign categories to each page to allow students to browse as well. While we don’t have a ton of categories now, we may in the future.

…Probably my favorite part of the subject guides is the focus on how-to’s. More general subject guides are great, but usually students are trying to accomplish something more specific. They’re not doing “architecture research” — they’re looking for information on a specific building or architect or design style. They’re not doing “English research” — they’re looking for literary criticisms, book reviews, etc. That’s why I think a task-based orientation works so much better than a subject-oriented one. The majority of the questions we get at the desk are from students trying to do the same few things and now we have guides that address those specific things that students are trying to accomplish.

JIBSUG seminar

Last year Kathy, Alain and I attended a JIBSUG seminar on web 2.0. I just wanted to list a ppt from talks I found interesting. It was a talk by Dave Pattern, who I believe is a computer scientist at Huddersfield.

Making the catalogue a good place to be - lipstick, cowbells and serendipity, Dave Pattern. In his talk, Dave showed many old hat e-commerce functionality applied to Opacs, the best applications being the ‘did you mean?’ spelling assist and the ‘other users who borrowed this, also borrowed…’. Moreover, he justified the applications with well reasoned aims and good statistical analysis to follow.

The other talks were the usual web 2.0 case studies. The use of Facebook at the British Library was interesting but only relevant to those who host ‘cubism exhibitions’ and the like.