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Dartmouth October Conference 2012

December 10, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

Dartmouth October Conference 2012
“Outside the Box: Innovation in the Library”
Notes from Wendy Shook and Carrie Macfarlane

Our top 4 take-aways:

  1. For innovation to be accepted, all users, suppliers, and contributors have to buy into the idea.  When planning, look for the weakest link and always ask: Why would this user/supplier/contributor want to change?
  2. “Minute Movies.”  This could be a theme to consider for video tutorials: short scenario-based video tutorials that start with a “why” (eg, I was told I needed 3 peer-reviewed journals articles), then teach a skill to meet the need.
  3. The “Awesome” box. Students returning materials can drop them in the regular return box or in the “Awesome” box, the contents of which are then posted on the library site as student picks.
  4. The Harvard Library catalog (HOLLIS) has a text-a-call number feature. Does III or Summon offer anything like that? We’ve seen some students take a photo of a call number.

Keynote Address: A Wide Lens Perspective on Innovation
Roy Adner – Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College

  1. There is a difference between innovation and successful innovation.  Innovation is seeing and filling the gap between what the user needs and what the user wants (or what you can convince the user he wants).  Successful innovation is innovation that  considers not only the user’s point of view, but whether or not that innovation can work in an existing framework, and the co-innovations required to make it a desirable solution.
  2. For innovation to be accepted, all users, suppliers, and contributors have to buy into the idea, and this means assessing changes in relationships.  “Managing adoption chains” means assessing and balancing the benefits and drawbacks for each contributor and user group (a chain is only as strong as the weakest link); the user might get an improved rather than superlative product if compromise is necessary to get all partners to cooperate. When planning, always ask: why would this user/supplier/contributor want to change?
  3. value proposition vs. scale of deployment
    • The most common pattern is prototype to pilot to full rollout
    • An alternative could be (as Apple tends to do):  rollout prototype with full scale deployment to minimize conflicting partners (conflict is avoided because the partners are buying in rather than participating in co-development) This requires assessing and applying the “minimal viable ecosystem”.
    • A by-product of the “minimal viable ecosystem” technique is the establishment of de facto leadership rather than being a collaborator.

Transforming Concepts into Actionable Project through Project Management
Shanti Freundlich – Liaison Librarian: Health Sciences, Nursing, & Social Work, Beatley Library, Simmons College
Vivienne Piroli – Deputy Library Director, Beatley Library, Simmons College

  • The principle discussion seemed to centre on “getting stuff done”; mission and vision driven projects achieved through cross-function teams and non-hierarchical leadership opportunities.

“What’s My Motivation?”: Adding Story and Context to Screen Shot Tutorials
Kari Mofford – Undergraduate and User Services Librarian, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

  • LIS can employ dramatised “minute movies” to add interest to video tutorials and to make them more memorable (even if still slightly embarrassing).
  • The awkward/embarrassment factor can be mitigated by inviting students to be part of the creative development (the overall storyboard /content developed by LIS), filming, and editing.  This might be an interesting way to reach out to students, and use their insight into making useful, memorable tutorials that have more impact.
  • It’s a good idea to start a video with the “Why,” then teach a skill to meet the need that’s been identified. Starting with the “why” can help with voice, giving the narrator a sense of purpose and conviction.

Using a Participatory Design Workshop to Renovate a Library Teaching Space         Laura Farwell Blake – Head, Services for Academic Programs, Harvard College Library
Reed Lowrie – Science Reference and Cartographic Librarian
Cabot Library, Interim Manager of Reference Services, Widener, Lamont, Cabot and Tozzer Libraries, Harvard College Library

  • This was a description of how a single, popular classroom/workspace was renovated using the input from both teaching staff and students.
  • The approach to focus groups was interesting, but inviting a lot of input can backfire when not all of the suggestions are applied and conversely, too much change can alienate traditionalists.
  • On a personal note: This was a bit of a walk down memory lane for Carrie, who used to manage this classroom and still knows several of the folks who facilitated its renovation! :)

Changing Their World, 4 Strings At a Time: Ukuleles in the Library!
Lisa Lavoie – Director of Library Services, Tunxis Community College

  • Entertaining attempt to generate interest in the library using a quirky gimmick. Their ukuleles have been borrowed hundreds of times.
  • A useful take-away, however, is the visceral reaction a tangible resource other than books can generate.

Honoring Student Assistants:  The Student Library Service Bookplate Program at Dartmouth College
Laura Braunstein – English Language and Literature Librarian, Dartmouth College

  • Bookplates are being used as a way to mark long service from student employees.
  • Students suggest the title of a book that is meaningful to them, into which the book plate is affixed.  On the positive side, book selection can make the student feel more connected to their library experience, and the thought was also put forth that this was the kind of positive reinforcement that could generate future support for the library.  the sometimes quirky, often random selections, however, did not necessarily reflect the library’s mission, and can potentially take up valuable shelf space. They have not gathered use statistics, but some copies have gone missing.
  • On a side note, the HOLLIS Catalog at Harvard now has virtual bookplates. Would we want to investigate these for this purpose?

There’s an App for That…Ask Your Librarian! 
Judy M. Spak – Curriculum Support Librarian, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale School of Medicine
Jan Glover – Education Services Librarian, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale School of Medicine

  • The discussion was largely based on the consistent use of specific apps across a cohort, and the management/development of those apps.  What stood out was that the apps and development discussed depended largely on every student, and by extension every librarian, having the same platform to work with/on.  Students are given iPads, but it is unreasonable to expect that no one will customize, or that subsequent cohorts will have the same version.
  • One surprising finding is that students and faculty both appreciated the lack of multitasking functionality on an iPad. This seems particularly relevant for faculty who are reluctant to allow the use of laptops in the classroom because of fear of distraction.
  • An interesting side note was the mention of the “personal librarian programme”, which sounded a bit like the 1-on-1 consultations we try to advertise to students.

Staffing the Information Commons in a Melded IT and Library Organization
Jill Parchuck – Co-Director Yale Center for Science and Social Science Information, Yale University Library
Themba Flowers – Co-Director Yale Center for Science and Social Science Information, Yale ITS, Academic IT Solutions, Yale University Library

  • The experiment was limited to one division of the library, and campus-wide and LIS IT seemed disconnected.
  • The thought occurs that even small steps in innovation may be difficult to adopt in institutions that have long and entrenched traditions.

Exploring the Future of Libraries: A Quick Walk Through the Work Taking Place in the Harvard Library Innovation Lab
Jeff Goldenson – Designer, Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory
Matt Phillips – Developer, Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory

  • An entertaining discussion by software developers (who weirdly apologized for not being librarians).  http://librarylab.law.harvard.edu/projects.html  Ideas included:
    • the “awesome” box: students returning materials could drop them in the regular return or in the “awesome” box, the contents of which would then be posted on the library site as student picks.  Neat idea, but problematic if the books selected as awesome reflect questionably on the institution – perhaps needs a disclaimer.
    • shelf view (will suffer a name change due to copyright infringement): a tool to generate a visual representation of a reading list as a section of bookshelf, with the metadata used to create visual approximations of spines.  It is debatable how much more useful than a list of titles this is, except that perhaps you could generate a simulated view of a section of shelf in the library and be able to navigate visually.
    • shelf.io: an app for users to generate an electronic, visual bookshelf to share (like sharing playlists, but more literary)
    • Introduction of the “library test kitchen” as an exercise in story driven design and entrepreneurship in context.  The presenters  described  becoming co-conspirators with the students and challenging the librarian-student power dynamic.  The result was unusual projects like the “white noise study table” to improve study focus,  and “coldspots” that were free from the distractions of being connected.
    • Would the Center for Social Entrepreneurship be interested in working with the library to imagine new services and tools?

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Other

  • The Harvard Library catalog (HOLLIS) has a text-a-call number feature. Does III or Summon offer anything like that? We’ve seen some students take a photo of a call number too.
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Archives on a Shoestring: Using social networking & web tools to share Vermont archives (conference report)

October 25, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

On Monday, I spoke at a small conference of about 45 archivists, librarians, and museum types at the Vermont Historical Society. The topic was Archives on a Shoestring: Using Social Networking and Web Tools to Share Vermont Archives.

“Shoestring” was intended as a metaphor not only for the cash-strapped but also for intrepid and plucky ideas:

I talked about Middlebury History Online, our archive of the College’s early history using WordPress.

Selene Colburn (UVM) talked about their popular “Ask” campaign to promote library research services. They use bookmarks, posters, the web, Flickr, and Facebook. Students clamor to be featured in the campaign.

Amber Billey (UVM) demo-ed Omeka, an open source, WordPress-like platform for hosting web exhibitions. Smith College, to name just one example, uses Omeka for its Girl Zines collection.

There was considerable drooling over Collective Access, a cataloguing tool and web application for museums, archives, and digital collections. Collective Access sees itself as David in the battle against Goliath. Goliath is being played by CONTENTdm. (Yes, that’s the very software we use to power Digital Collections at Middlebury). Champlain College will be launching a collection in Collective Access soon.

A few other highlights:

Broadcastr, a location-based mobile app that delivers content based on where you are (Foursquare meets podcasting?)

HistoryPin, a Google partnership with a UK-based non-profit group to share historic, archival photos on Google Maps and Streetviews.

Dipity: Interactive social-network-y timelines.

 

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Conference report: “Adventures in Copyright: Navigating Your Way Through Intellectual Property”

July 5, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

I recently traveled to Baltimore to spend three days among “my people” at the Center for Intellectual Property symposium. My people, of course, are those who spend a lot of their professional lives thinking about copyright. Just a few weeks before the conference began, the long-awaited Georgia State e-reserves opinion was handed down. Perfect timing for this crowd. It was the talk of the conference, as was the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, which was released earlier this year. I’d previously taken several online courses through the CIP and was thrilled to see these engaging teachers, thinkers, and defenders of Fair Use in person. Plus my hotel room had a view of Camden Yard and I got to enjoy the National Aquarium on my way out of town. And I might have had a few crab cakes. Many of the talks were recorded and video is available online. My brief summaries of the talks are below.

“The Obligation of Scholars”
Lawrence Lessig, Director, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University

Lawrence’s talk focused on the fact that scholarly research is not available to the vast majority of people. It’s hidden behind paywalls, accessible only to the “knowledge elite” who are affiliated with certain privileged schools with enough purchasing power. He believes that scholars should be outraged by this fact. He’s one of the founders of the Creative Commons and a very engaging speaker.

“The Elephant in the Room”
Peggy Hoon, Scholarly Communications Librarian University of North Carolina at Charlotte and CIP’s Virtual Intellectual Property Scholar

Peggy spoke about nonprofit mass digitization projects and her primary example was the (fantastic and groundbreaking) Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz. Technological capabilities are rushing ahead while copyright law is static and lagging. The reality is that we can’t wait for the law to catch up with the technology – we need to make on-the-ground guidelines for ourselves if we are to proceed with preserving scholarly materials and making them available to users. The Grateful Dead archive contains a variety of materials – text, recordings, artwork, t-shirts – and became extremely labor intensive to digitize due to a lack of consensus of best practices. Peggy hopes that other schools embarking on mass digitization projects will post their guidelines and best practices publicly so these things aren’t behind closed doors.

“A Code of Best Practices in Fair Use”
Brandon Butler, Director of Public Policy Initiatives, Association of Research Libraries
Patricia Aufderheide, University Professor, American University School of Communication

Brandon and Patricia are two of the co-facilitators of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries and I admire their work greatly. I was already quite familiar with the Code but was interested to hear them speak a little more about what constitutes transformative use, ways to manage risk, and the importance of documenting the principles and practices of an individual community. They also spoke about the GSU opinion and countered some common arguments by publishers regarding Fair Use.

“JeopARTy: Teaching Ethics and Law of Artistic Appropriation”
Paul Dobbs, Library Director, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Paul gave us a taste of how the MassArt librarians teach their students about Fair Use.  An interactive session where we discussed what is fair vs. ethical vs. legal, what is parody or homage, what is plagiarism. A recent example of this issue was the artist Shepard Fairey’s use of an AP photo to create his Obama “HOPE” poster. Several other similar (although not as high profile) examples followed and it was fascinating to see how everyone in the room felt about certain appropriations of another artist’s work.

“The Shifting Legislative/Policy Landscape: An Update”
Joan Cheverie, Policy Specialist, EDUCASE

The Georgia State decision was touched on of course, and a host of acronyms you’ve probably heard of – DMCA, PIPA, SOPA, TPP – were discussed as well. This session was less successful than the others because the subject matter was so varied and complex and there just wasn’t much time to delve into any one topic. We could have spent the entire hour on SOPA alone.

“Emerging Issues in Copyright Law”
Karyn Temple Claggett, Senior Counsel for Policy and International Affairs, United States Copyright Office

Everyone was very excited to have a representative from the Copyright Office at the conference, and attendees came prepared with their tough questions. Karyn spoke about addressing online piracy in a way that still protects free speech and expression. She hopes that orphan works legislation will be helpful. She’s currently working on a way for people to deal with small claims of copyright violation without spending six figures on legal fees. Her team is also revamping the Copyright Office website to create better tools for the public.

“Panel of Professionals”: from Purdue University, Baltimore City Public Schools, and ARTstor

A general panel discussion on Fair Use that tackled a wide range of topics. Panelists shared favorite books and blogs, commiserated about struggles, and urged everyone to read, participate, and understand all sides so we can help and guide our constituents.

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Workshop Report– “Spaces That Inspire: Gathering the Data and Acting on What our Students Tell Us About the Library as Place”

May 14, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

Workshop Report–  “Spaces That Inspire: Gathering the Data and Acting on What our Students Tell Us About the Library as Place”  by NERCOMP.  Description and schedule with names of presenters can be viewed here.  http://nercomp.org/index.php?section=events&evtid=141

This day long workshop turned out to be quite useful and I was impressed by how well organized it was.  I’d be happy to share more details with anyone who might be interested.

1st session: “Post-its, Pencils, and Placement: A Simple Technique for Getting Student Involvement in the Planning Process “ was sort of a repeat for me personally because the inspiration for it came from a Dartmouth Conference presentation by our own Carrie Macfarlane, to whom for which credit was duly given.  I’d seen Carrie’s presentation and also seen the technique in use here at Middlebury.   A large board is installed in a public place asking a single question.  Post-it pads are provided and students write answers on the notes and post them on the board.  This encourages a lot of interactive comments as people build off the ideas of others.  Themes surface and expand.  It’s quick and inexpensive.  They used it to gather information for a renovation project and they shared the results of the renovation that is opening next month.   Here’s  a link to the PowerPoint.  http://nercomp.org/corecode/uploads/event/uploaded_pdfs/Post-its,%20Pencils,%20and%20Placement%20-%20University%20of%20RI%20-%20Amanda%20Izenstark%20and%20Mary%20MacDonald_138.pdf

2nd session:  “Worth a Thousand Words. Letting Pictures Speak”  A very interesting and useful session.  The idea is to get a group of students in a room and provide each of them with large pieces of paper and various markers/pens/pencils, then ask them to draw their ideal classroom, study space, lounge, whatever.  Emphasizing  that there’s no right answer and that they’re designing their own personal ideal.   Allow them time to brainstorm visually on their own, then go around the room and ask them to describe their drawing. This exercise brings out common themes as well as unique ideas.  Notes are taken and a list of desired elements compiled.  We each drew our ideal classroom and then went around the room and looked at everyone else’s drawing.   I can imagine actually trying this here at Middlebury LIS.

3rd session: “Getting the Most out of Your Data: Methods for Collection, Coding and Use for Implementing Change in Student Learning Spaces” The most useful session of the day for me.  Basically they shared how they made use of the great quantity of data that is to be found within the comments fields of surveys.  Using a list of “codes” they categorize various comments and then use a spreadsheet to organize them by code.  The organized lists can then be shared with appropriate staff,(for instance those who oversee printing, reference services, the café, etc.)  for further evaluation.   I emailed the presenters and they willingly shared their list of 100 codes.  Key take away- they hired student assistants to go through all the comments and code them because they, just like us, don’t have the time to do it themselves.   Here’s the PowerPoint.

http://nercomp.org/corecode/uploads/event/uploaded_pdfs/Getting%20the%20Most%20out%20of%20Your%20Data%20-%20Sarah%20Hutton%20and%20Rachel%20Lewellen%20-%20UMass%20Amherst%20_137.pdf

4th session: “Resurrecting Elihu Burritt Library: The Challenges and Opportunities of Rehabbing Library Space” The presenters gave an overview of a recent renovation project and talked about future plans.  Not particularly applicable to me or Middlebury.

5th session: “Space Project Plans Writ Small”  We used a retro style game from a diner place mat (literally, the kind of thing that kids would get to fill out in a restaurant in the 60s and 70s) as a tool to get user input into the kind of space they’d like.   It’s the kind of thing you have to see to understand and an example of it can be seen in the ppt from the 3rd session.   I’m not sure what to think of this tool, but if we had an artist who could draw something similar, it might be interesting to give something like it a try with a group of student assistants.

The day ended with the very capable facilitator Susanna Cowan, Undergraduate Education Team Leader at Univ. of Conn., leading us in a review of the day.  Thanks to Hans Raum for pointing this workshop out to me!

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Innovative Users Group (IUG) meeting – Chicago 2012

April 24, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

Arabella Holzapfel, Shawn O’Neil & I (Barbara Merz) were at the 20th IUG in Chicago – beautiful city – love the lake, parks etc. etc. The meeting was quite interesting too. We’ll give brief highlights of the sessions we found to be useful, and we’ll download the associated materials, which in most cases will include PowerPoint presentations, to the folder \orgs\LIS\LISstaff\ILS III Millennium User Materials\IUG 2012 materials for your enjoyment & edification.  An observation I (Shawn) had after attending these workshops is that Middlebury College is ahead of the curve to many other Institutes in technology. Our network infrastructure seems to be superior to others.

  • “Running a User Experience Group in the absence of a Sys Admin.” (BM). Bentley University. Without a Sys Librarian, III duties fall to a group of 7: 2 tech support, 2 reference, 1 circ, 1 tech services, 1 special collections. 8 staff can access the III helpdesk. Very interesting model.
  • “Sierra Roadmap & Update” (BM) III’s pitch for the wonderful new world of Sierra. Sierra will have 100% of Millennium functionality.
  • “Learning Library-Specific Context to Mobilize Library Catalog” (BM) At University of Miami concern for the usefulness of the OPAC on mobile devices, even though searching starts with Summon, led to the adoption of Bob Duncan’s mobile stylesheet, with modifications to take care of their OPAC customizations. Definitely worth follow-up.
  • Load Profile Forum (BM & AH). Useful review of resources available to load profilers. Wiki available but underutilized! Time for Middlebury to review RDA implications.
  • “Automation: Boost your Productivity a Thousand Times.” (BM) Good tech geek presentation. Use of Expect in various flavors, AutoIt plus Java to automate repetitive tasks e.g creating review lists from record numbers, barcodes etc.
  • Systems Managers Forum (BM) Mostly controlled by III staff member talking about transition to Sierra + how things would work in Sierra. Take away message – III’s efforts will be largely directed to Sierra development from now on, even though they insist that Millennium development is continuing. My conclusion – Middlebury should consider the future of our ILS with all due haste!
  • “When your item types just don’t work anymore” (AH) was a discussion about how and why a library totally revamped their item types (going from around 10 to 101) to help them better identify various formats of material, which in turn aided greatly in tracking statistics of all kinds for all reasons. Most of it is useful ‘inside baseball’ stuff, but one intriguing thing that came out is that they (a public library in Oklahoma) loan out bike locks.
  • Two useful sessions focused on using Millennium (and, in one session, additional assistance from an outside vendor) to aid in weeding (AH). (One library had 100,000 volumes in off-site storage to weed.) Interesting factoids: Jefferson County Public Libraries in Colorado (my home state!), with 10 branches, serving 548,000, orders 100-120 copies of bestsellers. They run their weeding list weekly and withdraw about 120,000 items each year.
  • Four useful sessions dealt with various aspects of batch record loads, particularly those for e-books. (AH) One session was presented by staff from San Jose State University, where they provide e-books from 17 different providers/platforms, and have patron-driven acquisitions programs from three different vendors. They use a combination of tools, including Excel and WinBatch scripts, to de-dupe and perform other necessary functions on batch records.
  • “Using circulation data to validate an approval plan” (AH) described one library’s journey towards refining their approval plan profile (for print books) to match or surpass the circulation rates for firm orders.
  • “Getting the most out of Print Templates” (SO) –creating and using print templates for everything from spine labels to hold slips.
  • “Centralized Weeding: using create list and icodes to streamline the weeding process” and “Millennium Makeover magic: weeding in an INN-Reach consortium”- (SO) The 1st presentation dealt with both public and Academic libraries and the later was an academic library that was involved with  INN-Reach. In both, faculty  was given a say over the weeding. There seems to be no standard method for choosing what is to be weeded.
  • “Creating lists for Beginners – Why created the wheel again” (SO)  In other words, use others’ lists (with permission).
  • “Confounding by Copyright?” (SO) It seems guidelines change all the time and you can “buy protection” for copyright privileges.
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Top Picks from DrupalCon 2012 Denver

March 27, 2012 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

We (Adam and Ian) were in Denver, Colorado this week attending the annual US Drupal convention. In addition to attending sessions, we were able to connect with colleagues from other institutions including Amherst, Wellesley, Lawrence University, UNH, and CSUMB. We sponsored a “birds of a feather” session, with Amherst, to introduce interested parties to Monster Menus, a Drupal module that Amherst and Middlebury use to add a site hierarchy and manage permissions on our site. This session was surprisingly well attended by about thirty participants and we had a lively discussion about Monster Menus’ capabilities and limitations. We also attended multiple sessions on using Drupal in higher education to hear what people at other schools were doing with the platform.

All of the sessions can be watched on the conference website (use the tabs across the top to browse each day’s sessions). Adam and I will highlight some that we found especially engaging, but if there’s one we missed that you think others would enjoy, please share it in the comments.

Keynotes

Dries Buytaert: Dries is the guy who created Drupal and currently runs the leading Drupal consulting business and serves as President of the Drupal Association. His talk covered where the development team is focusing for the Drupal 8 release. There are three main areas of focus, (1) mobile compatibility, (2) modernizing the development API with the Symfony framework, and (3) improving the user interface for content authors. He announced a tentative release date of August 2013 for Drupal 8.

Mitchell Baker: Mitchell is the “Chief Lizard Wrangler”, the head of the Mozilla project that produces the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client among other efforts. She talked about the “Maker Ethic” and how the goal of Mozilla it to enable and promote the freedom to create, write, and publish. As she describes, the Firefox browser is but one product to enable this freedom and only one of the many projects Mozilla is engaged in.

Luke Wroblewski: Luke gave a very entertaining presentation arguing that we now need to develop web applications for mobile devices first and worry about the desktop experience second. He presents amble data backing up this assertion, which is guiding the mobile-first goal for Drupal 8. Adding responsive designs for mobile interfaces to our platforms is a 2012 goal for the Web Applications Development workgroup here, so we’ll be doing a lot of work in this space shortly.

Ian’s Picks

Designing Fast and Beautiful Maps: This talk describes the TileMill and MapBox mapping tools, showing how you can transform a simple spreadsheet into an interactive map interface that can easily be added to a Drupal site (or any other website). Though this is probably not something that we’d use for the main campus map it looks like a great tool for one-off mapping projects including student research. By the way, if you have a map that you’d like us to feature on the site or in MiddLab, contact me and I’ll be happy to help you get that map online.

I just want to edit a node and Five things we need to create an awesome experience for content creators: These discussions describe the initial thinking about the user interface for content creators in Drupal 8. While we won’t be moving to that platform until late 2013/early 2014, and some of the decisions about the platform may very well change by then, this is an early warning about what to expect. I should note that some of the features they discuss, like inline editing, are already available to us thanks to the Monster Menus module developed by Amherst.

HTML 4 S – While We’re Waiting for the Revolution: We spent a lot of time thinking and talking about adding HTML5 features to our sites, but that’s not always possible due to assumptions made by the back-end systems as well as browser compatibility. This talk discusses the steps we can take to get “close enough” on HTML5 adoption and some of the pitfalls we’ll encounter that are specific to Drupal, though much of the information here is Drupal-agnostic. I’ll give a small warning that the speaker is quite colorful and animated in his speech.

Adam’s Picks

Real World Performance Analysis: How to Identify Performance Problems in Your Own Sites: This talk provides a good strategy for tackling performance issues in Drupal sites without wasting time on optimizations that won’t have a big impact.

Keeping The Lights On – Operations and Monitoring Best Practices:  This session is focused on practical tools and techniques you can use to keep “your fingers on the pulse” of your site, from availability to performance to security.

 

Also, we were able to enjoy Colorado for a bit before the conference.

Looking forward to next year in Portland, Oregon, or perhaps Munich or São Paulo later this year!

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Vermont Library Conference Report

June 3, 2011 by
Categories: Midd Blogosphere

I attended this one day conference on May 24th. Some of the sessions may be of interest for those of you outside the Ref & Instruction Work group.  My full notes are available online (no login required).  The topics in my report  include:

  • Health & Wellness Resources (mainly free online resources recommended by a UVM medical librarian)
  • Borrow or buy? The convergence of Interlibrary Loan and Collection Development
  • Use is King: User-Centered Acquisitions (background on past practices and details of UVM’s “Order on demand” program).

I tried to spell out some of the acronyms/jargon for the wider LIS audience, but if something isn’t clear, just ask me or post a comment.

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