Thursday 12 September 2013

Starting Lecturing today - Information and Social Computing @ UCD

Looking forward to starting lecturing today, in Information and Social Computing. I am hoping to cover these topics, in a whirlwind tour of the area. Fingers crossed that it all goes according to plan. 

  • What is Information
  • What is Social ComputingHistory of Information
  • How humans deal with information
  • Information Design
  • Data, Metadata, Big data, Data Mining
  • Social Media and Networks
  • Machines and Humans
  • Futures
  • Information policy
  • Information Behaviour
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Information Seeking and Behaviour
  • Organization, groups, classification


Thursday 5 September 2013

SUMA > A Mobile Space Assessment Toolkit

I am very interested in trying this out, if I get the time - and a tablet at work!  

Overview from http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/spaceassesstool

Suma comprises a set of tools, including a mobile tablet-based (i.e. Apple iPad) data collection application, that will allow library staff to collect, aggregate, and interactively analyze real-time data about the usage of physical space and services. This tool will support the collection of more fine-grained data about physical space usage patterns by supporting the annotation of users with "activities." The data that this tool provides will allow the libraries to build on existing assessment practices by significantly improving our ability to analyze physical space usage trends against various milestones, as well as generating more dynamic and current data visualizations. As a result, this data can be both collected and utilized more frequently and at a much wider scope than before with relative ease.
This project is currently being used at NC State as a pilot project for a wider deployment. Examples of the current and planned uses for this toolkit include the collection and analysis of data relating to:
  • Building headcounts
  • Reference desk transactions
  • Experimental technology usage
  • Media production activities
  • Experimental furniture usage

IM use on library web sites - overview July 2013


7/24/2013AIM
We were seeking a free embedable chat widget, which does not require a log on and will alert staff to the existence of a chat message to replace the now defunct Meebo service. A survey of the Libraries of the top 100 universities and Irish Academic libraries was undertaken to establish if chat was available to patrons to establish what alternatives are available.

Method

The Top 100 Universities as listed by the Times Online at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/  were selected to be visited, along with the Universities and Institutes of Technology in the Republic of Ireland.  The library web site for each site was visited and any offering of Online chat / Virtual Reference was listed, including the service provider, and whether alternatives such as social media were offered. Non-english language sites were explored but it was difficult to establish if chat was available in the non-latin alphabet sites. Where evident alternatives were noted (links to social networks etc.) Each visit was cursory, as a measure of how obvious the chat service was, therefore it is possible that libraries identified as not offering this service do so, but were omitted as a result of this methodology.

General Results

Ireland

Of the 20 sites visited, 4 had chat / virtual reference offerings. 3 of these were identifiable as being provided by libraryh3lp. (UCD, NUIM and WIT). 1 was not identifiable (NUIG).  80% of Irish Academic Libraries do not offer online chat / virtual reference.

Top 100 Universities

Graph 1: Break down of chat provision by country.







US
38
UK
2
Australia
3
Belgium
0
Brazil
0
Canada
3
China
2
France
1
Germany
1
Hong Kong
2
Israel
0
Japan
1
Korea
1
Netherlands
3
Russia
0
Singapore
1
Sweden
1
Switzerland
0
Taiwan
0
Turkey
1



63% of the 100 library sites visited offered chat / virtual reference.  There was often more than 1 option offered. For example Chat, IM, SMS and an online form.
43% of the libraries were located in the US. Of these, 38 (88%) offered chat/virtual reference.
Excluding US based libraries 25 (44%) of the remaining libraries offer online chat/reference. However the trend is significantly different outside of North America.
23% offered links to social networks. These included Facebook, twitter, Google talk, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, LinkedIN and AOL.
IM was specifically offered by 8% of sites, but all of the services involved required account log ins for all participants.


Graph 2: Break down of percent of Universities offering chat by country



Europe has a much lower provision of online chat than North America.

Map 1: Geographical Spread.

Map from http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/world_map1.htm visited 24 July 2013.  Red numbers are the Top 100 Universities by country, and the Green number is Ireland.


Table 3: Top 10 Universities – Library chat/ virtual reference provision
University
Chat / Virtual Reference Provision.
Harvard
NONE
MIT
LibGuides
University of Cambridge
NONE
Oxford University
Libraryh3lp
Berkeley
Question Point
Stanford
Libraryh3lp
Princeton
Libraryh3lp
UCLA
Question Point
Tokyo
NONE (note: only English language site visited)
Yale
NONE
40% do not provide chat, 30% use libraryh3lp, 20% Question Point and 10% Libguides.
Table 4: Top 100 Universities – Library chat services used
Service Used
Number of Sites Using
Libguides
2
Library Help
21
Question Point
21
Springshare
4 (Also Libguides)
Calis
1
Dotori on
1
Chatbot
2
Ask a librarian .org
1 (Florida State Initiative)
Facebook
1
Libanswers
1
Liveperson.net
1
Mycustomercloud.com
1

Secondary Observations

Alternatives to chat offered included online forms (Ask a librarian/ feedback etc (13)), e-mail links  (9)
Many chat services were limited in the time during which they were offered, additionally many were unavailable during the Summer.
It was difficult to establish who the service provider was – as the source code for the page had to be examined in most instances. This left some services unspecified.
23% of the libraries offered social media interactions. Of note is the UK, 2 sites offered chat, while 4 of the 7 that did not offered Social media connections.
Text / SMS services were offered by 5 % of the Top University Libraries.

Conclusion

  1. Libraries are not utilizing free chat services or widgets, their chat services are constituent parts of larger support services such as Springshare, Questionpoint.
  2. Library ITT Dublin, have very little uptake on the chat offered via Meebo previously.
  3. Trials of digsby, Trillian, etc., all proved unsatisfactory, failing to log on to social media sites, widgets failing to register on live web pages. Chatwing was the best of these, but did not offer an alert.
  4. Chat is only one part of virtual reference, other means of service provision can be explored.
  5. Social media can be utilized in the meanwhile. A trial of the embedded Facebook comment widget is currently in development. 

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Love Addthis.com

Inspired by a speaker at the IIUG last June, I finally got around to looking at the Senate House Catalogue and the social sharing buttons the integrated into the bibliographic records on their library opac.

Digging around in the source code pointed me towards addthis.com and a little while later, the bibliographic display now looks like this!
And the brief results list like this.


Cross browser display issues were solved by placing the add this code in a separate table, and using to to align the icons.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

Great overview of the social media revolution

Glenn Mehta (#InfiniteRipple) showed us this video today, I think it gives a great overview of the state of Social Media's growth and direction. It explains a lot about why it's so dominant in peoples lives. 

2 new Facebook apps live

The Facebook apps I developed over the summer are now live on the Library's Facebook Page. There are two, one that embeds the catalogue search page, and one the embeds the exam paper search page. Both of these leverage our new responsive web design.
Two more are in development, but are reliant on services moving to providing https:// access. 

All I needed to do to make it live, was disable the sandbox and save the settings. 

Monday 2 September 2013

Inculsion of Search Boxes on Library Homepages - An Overview

When evaluating the library home page for a new design, I reviewed the inclusion and search targets of the search boxes on the library homepages of Libraries identified on Librarytechnology.org as having both Millennium and Summon, and Irish Academic Libraries irrespective of ILS or RDS. Where no box was immediately evident, but a link offered, this is noted in the table below.

Millennium is the library management software, and Summon is a resource discovery layer.  Both are used to provide search options to library web site users for locating print and electronic information.
Where another interface is offered instead this is noted. There is a clear trend to offer search on tabbed content or links, as opposed to search boxes on the homepage (14 sites)

Homepages were visited in July 2013.

Overview results

Institution

Library OPAC

Summon 

Other 

Comment

Brown University VuFind
Darlarna University * Summon only
Dartmouth College One Search Parsed records,
with three results columns:
Summon, Library
Catalogue, Library Web Site.
Fairfield Search options offered on tabs,
with addtional information on
mouse roll over 
Middlebury College Tabbed search option 
Murdoch University * Summon only
Queensland University of Technology * Customised with check
boxes for all, articles, etc.)
Temple University Search Tabs
University of Houston Lefthand menu - very clear
University of Miami Search Tabs
University of Nevada Popdown menu
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Search tabs including Google Scholar
includes options for articles and catalog
University of Tasmania Tick boxes  then databases, journals,
catalog (keyword & classic)
and help. Then explore more,
 includes, citation finder,
and ILL core tools.
Victoria University * * Search options listed, summon, book
and e-books, and journal articles
University College Cork Search Tabs
Trinity College Dublin Search Tabs
University of Limerick Search Tabs
NUI Galway One search box, with more options
Dublin City University Search tabs
NUI Maynooth Search tabs
GMIT * and Google custom search
AIT Search tabs
ITB * * via tick boxes
ITC *
CIT * *
IADT Search Tabs
DKIT *
LYIT *
LIT *
Sligo IT * Search tabs
ITT Dublin * search tabs Summon branded Find IT
ITTR * Link to summon
WIT * Link to summon
DIT * Link to summon