the game's afoot

Infocamp Summary

Well, I’ve had a month to reflect on my two days at Infocamp, and here are my various and random conclusions.

1. Unconferences work!  I really enjoyed the controlled chaotic brain-dump atmosphere that Infocamp fostered.  I noticed that a lot of people who might not have been comfortable presenting in a typical conference atmosphere were more willing to participate in the more casual environment that Infocamp provided.  The conference was cheap, short enough to fit into a regular workweek, and a great place to network and share ideas with a dynamic and smart group of individuals.  Plus, I love my Infocamp tshirt, which was included (along with pretty good food, might I add) in the cost of the conference.  Overall- WIN.
2. The “funnest” Infocamp presentation award goes to “Going Neon: Dutch Libraries.”  It was great to see all the innovative uses of space going on in Dutch libraries and to compare the business models of American and Dutch libraries.  We could definitely learn from our European library comrades.
3. Most useful presentations/discussions for my job were the Teaching Tech to Non-Users discussion facilitated by Sam Wallin and myself, along with Sam’s Using Video to Enhance and Advertise Library Service.  Sam’s video presentation gave me lots of great ideas for low cost ways to use video in library programming and marketing.
4. Most generally interesting presentations were Jason Wobbrock’s usability keynote and Brian Rowe’s user generated content/ fair use discussion,  closely followed by Nika Smith’s presentation on user privacy.
5. In addition to learning a lot in two days, I also connected with a variety of people that can help me in my reference and programming roles, including a woman who writes history books about Washington, employees of Microsoft, Webjunction, and Zaaz, and several new academic and public reference librarians with whom to share strategies, ideas, and resources.  This conference proved to be far more valuable than the $50 admission fee would suggest. 
6. If you’re interested in reading Infocamp attendees’ experiences* in 140 characters or less via Twitter, here’s a link! 

*(My Twitter name is agathafrye)

User Generated Content- Fair Use Discussion with Brian Rowe

I found Brian Rowe to be a very interesting gentleman.  Brian has a BA in Informatics from the University of Washington and is currently pursuing his juris doctorate at Seattle University’s School of Law.  He is a Creative Commons activist and is also the founder of Freedom for IP, “a grass roots organization dedicated to exploring the interaction of Intellectual Property Legislation with Human Rights.”

Brian started out our discussion by explaining the “four factor test” for fair use (section 107): fair use of a copyrighted work… for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research is not an infringement of copyright.  In determining fair use, the factors to be considered shall include:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
  • (from Brian’s slideshow “Fair Use & Creative Commons Best Practices for NPO’s”)

Brian then went on to talk about current trends with Creative Commons licensing.  More and more tech savvy folks are choosing to share their intellectual property and work via Creative Commons license: “Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.”

We talked about a lot of examples of fair use, user generated content, Creative Commons, and various related court cases related to these subjects- to name just a few of our meandering topics:

• Internet Archive, who archive works on the internet and retroactively honor take down requests from creators (Internet Archives’ terms of use).
• Cory Doctorow’s most recent book “Little Brother,” which was released in its entirety on the internet under a Creative Commons license which allowed anyone to share, remix, and share remixed work provided it’s done on a noncommercial basis.  Some of the Little Brother remixes can be found on Cory’s website Craphound.
• Wikipedia entries being challenged for containing information that may or may not fall under fair use or public domain.  One recent example of a challenge involved Chemical Abstract Service numbers (CAS numbers).  Here are a couple of links discussing this challenge and the outcome.
• Coleco’s trademark infringement lawsuit: the makers of Cabbage Patch Kids sued Topps, the creators of the Garbage Pail Kids collectors cards.  New York Times Article link

Brian also recommended several sites for reading up on issues related to user generated content, fair use, and Creative Commons. 

• Stanford University Libraries’ Copyright and Fair Use site
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) site
• American University’s Center for Social Media site

  His presentation slides are also available on Slideshare: view them here!

This presentation was awesome.  Again, I wish I had had more time to talk with Brian, but he’s my friend on Twitter as a result of our Infocamp connection, so I get to read what he’s thinking about regularly (albeit only 140 characters at a time).

Using Video to Enhance and Advertise for Library Service

My friend and former classmate Sam Wallin from Fort Vancouver Public Library System (see Computer Training for Non-Users entry from Saturday) gave a presentation that he’s working on for the next Oregon Library Association conference.  Sam is the brainchild behind the One Minute Critic, which is a program that he started with a digital camera and internet access.  The premise: book reviews on video in one minute or less. 

Sam started the project with a tripod pointed at himself, then began turning his camera on coworkers and eventually library patrons.  Once he amassed a substantial number of reviews, he approached his library management and asked them to turn One Minute Critic into an officially sanctioned library project.  Because he had so many reviews already and his management determined that the equipment and time required for the project were minimal, Fort Vancouver welcomed One Minute Critic into the fold. 

One Minute Critic videos currently live on Fort Vancouver’s website under the “find a book” section, in addition to having a Wordpress website.  One Minute Critic videos are also posted on YouTube and Blip.TV, in addition to cross-posting new video announcements on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and a variety of other social web services.  Sam put together a library program for One Minute Critic and had over 40 attendees, some of whom were actually brave enough to create their own One Minute Critic reviews on the fly. 

Some tips that Sam mentioned for new library videographers:

• sound quality- get in as close as you can to minimize background noise, and try to find somewhere semi-quiet for your filming
• use a good microphone if you can (or enjoy white noise)
• use a tripod or a pile of books to steady your camera
• leave room for editing- wait five seconds after hitting “record,” and let the video go for five seconds after the subject finishes speaking
• Don’t be afraid to do more than one take if the first one doesn’t work out
• Try multiple angles for added interest
• Every time you add another subject to your filming, you add more planning and editing time to your project
• Keep your equipment simple- Sam used to use a mini-DV cam and now uses a regular digital camera with video capability

One Minute Critic is interesting because it provides a way for librarians to use video as a marketing tool.  Creating video content with a library focus can reach non-users on the internet more quickly, cheaply, and effectively than many other marketing techniques.  I’m really enthused about implementing One Minute Critic or a similar project in my library!

Geoinformatics: Why You Need the Science, Why the Scientists Needs You

This was a general discussion about how to make scientific information, specifically geodata, useful to as many people as possible.  There is a great deal of publicly accessible information available online and in print concerning water, air, vegetation, fish and wildlife, and environmental hazards that isn’t getting the use it deserves because of faulty website design, competitive attitudes between federal agencies, a lack of interoperable data standards, etc.  Tim Merrick, the Science Information Manager for the US Geological Survey site, facilitated the discussion.  Some of the conversation was over my head as a fairly nonscientific human, but I did get some recommendations for good web resources for common geodata questions that we get in the library. 

Some of the resources that we discussed:

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website
• USGS (maps will be opened up for public consumption online very soon!)
• USGS Realtime Water Data
• Oregon Explorer site through Oregon State University
• Environmental Protection Association (EPA) site
• EPA superfund information
• Parcel Viewers (Geographic Information Systems):
  • King County
  • Thurston County
  • Clark County

Interesting discussion questions that came up:

• is scientific data being quashed by our current administration?
• mashups- how much of this data is available in a standard accessible format such as XML, and if so, can’t others in the information field start combining the data in useful ways and making it publicly available online?
• are there any movements towards data standards to make this information interoperable across agencies and other research associations?

Sunday Morning with Tamara Adlin!

Tamara Adlin from FellSwoop, LLC and Adlin, Inc. started Sunday morning off with a bang.  Tamara is a customer experience consultant.  Previously, Tamara created the Customer Experience Services team for Amazon Services and has worked in user experience for a variety of companies including the Army Research Laboratory.  She is also the co-author of The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design with John Pruitt.  Tamara was a hilarious and enthusiastic presenter.  Early on in her talk, she told a story about how she dropped the F bomb during her interview to head up Amazon Services’ Customer Experience Team.  They decided to hire her anyhow, and her new boss greeted her in the hallways with “How the F are you today, Tamara?” for the duration of her Amazon career.  Her great stories set the tone for her plenary presentation. 

Tamara talked about creating positive user experiences online, but kept her language basic enough that a non-techie individual such as myself could understand.  Her focus was mainly in combatting the “dirty little secret” of user centered design in real businesses- the people making decisions that directly affect whether or not the user experience team gets anything done don’t know what they actually want the UI folks to do, can’t admit that they don’t know, don’t understand that no one actually knows, and therefore can’t help but make the UI team’s lives miserable.  A couple of great quotes…

Tamara felt that the real way to combat what she referred to as “corporate underpants” was to accomplish the following before anything else happens in the usability process:

• help your customers to figure out what they want and what they are doing
• & write it down
• … because no one else will

Some of Tamara’s tricky little methods for “getting to yes” in an organization were deceptively simple and funny:

• doctor heal thyself (you are a user interface and/or a product, you users are the project stakeholders and muckety-mucks, analyze the annoying little buggers, design yourself to usable and create usable products)
• write things down (bat your eyes and ask for the top three- business goals [numbers], brand goals [usually are related to other brands], customer experience goals [stated as quotes you’d like to hear after people use the new improved thing you’re building])
• get written items officially approved by someone at least one level higher than the person you’re working with
• be brave enough to look and feel really, really stupid (be the dumbest person in the room, apologize a lot, congratulate other people for your own ideas, remember that everyone in the room is walking on political thin ice [and help them], when you’re totally stuck, remember that no one knows that, and will think that whatever you do next is the thing you’ve been planning since the dawn of time)
• do at least one exercise that forces honchos to stand up and play with magical, mystical sticky notes (get people to talk to each other)
• create personas using magical, mystical sticky note exercise, then show them something that looks like excel (the magic of STATISTICS)

Although Tamara was from the business world, a lot of her observations on human nature, management and organizational hierarchies, and improving usability in general spoke to me as a librarian in an organization that is collectively looking to make services useful for our patrons.  At the time of her presentation, Tamara struck me as the Tina Fey of usability consultants.  This was a really great presentation to start off the second day of Infocamp (along with the free coffee, of course).

Going Neon: Dutch Libraries

University of Washington MLIS/MPA student Cadi Russell-Sauve took us on a tour of Dutch libraries through photographs.  Most of her images can be found here.  Again, because my notes were so random, I’m going to go with a bulleted list format.  The two libraries that Cady talked the most about were the Rotterdam and Delft libraries. 

First stop: Rotterdam Library

• This 25 year old library is right next to the farmer’s market so it’s in a central location. 
• There are lots of bright colors and neon everywhere! 
• Almost all the bookshelves are on wheels so that they can utilize space better.
• Most shelves are shoulder high or less so that the space doesn’t feel as overwhelming. 
• Bottom shelves on the rolling units are angled so that people don’t have to lean down all the way. 
• Lots of bright colors. 
• Materials have RFID chips, materials come through on a conveyer belt and are dropped into the right bucket for easy sorting. 
• Plug in pianos with headphones for practice. 
• Dutch residents have to pay to be a member of the library- anyone can go in, but you have to pay to check out materials.  There are also late fees for materials on top of the library membership.  Libraries are also heavily subsidized by generous government grants.
• 1 in 3 Dutch residents own a library card. 
• Homeless policy- if they aren’t disturbing anyone, we won’t disturb them. 
• The library bathrooms cost money, which is common in Europe. 
• Lots of compact shelving in the basement. 
• First two floors were fiction- dutch fiction, then multilingual fiction. 
• 6th floor- quiet study. 
• Ground floor has a cafe that served pie, and beer and wine!?   
• Music section was called “Discotheque.” 
• Dutch have different copyright laws, so all of the music in the collection was in the process of being digitized. 

Next Stop: Delft Public Library

• “Everything the Seattle Public Library tried to be and failed.”- Deborah Jacobs
• TU Delft was Cady’s favorite library on her library tour.
• Delft Public Library lives in the middle of a shopping center. 
• The two desks are labeled Client Service (circ) and Reference Service. 
• Big digital board with upcoming events, floorplans, etc; were created by hacking Wii systems. 
• Library employees- no official MLS or certification requirement for employment.  The library Director for Delft was a marketing executive previously, and most of the other staff come from a computer/tech background. 
• Lots of strange “Media pods” everywhere- egg shaped chair with remote to listen to music.  Nobody used these!  
• This library was very noisy. 
• Cafe was on the second floor so everyone could hear blaring music, espresso machines,  clattering dishes, talking, etc.  Again, the cafe had beer and wine! 
• Periodicals were on second floor next to the cafe, so people could browse magazines while they snacked or had a refreshment. 
• The Romance novel section was in a bright red room with a plush rug. 
• You can rent art to hang in your house! 
• The Teen section had 2 Xboxes and 2 Playstation 2’s, lots of comfortable chairs, and rolling shelves that they can push out of the way for teen programs. 
• The Kids section had toys, dress up clothes, lots of niche bench spaces for kids and teens.  The kid’s section also had Guitar Hero for kids to play on a first come first serve basis. 

Cadi also talked about the Schiedam Library, the DOK Library, and the Amsterdam Library, but I think my computer battery went dead at that point and I neglected to take further notes.  You can view all of Cadi’s photos at:

http://jw.bounceme.net/cadi/photos/LibraryPhotos/

This was a really fun presentation and a great way to end a long day of strenuous brain activity at Infocamp.  I now have fantasies of working for a noisy, colorful, innovative Dutch public library some day.

On-the-fly Low Budget Usability session

This session was presented by Colleen Brazil, Content Access Manager for the Sno-Isle Library system.  Colleen helps to design the Sno-Isle website, and she gave an overview of the process she used to help redesign the teen page so that it’s relevant and useful for Sno-Isle’s teen patrons.

The first thing Colleen did was to identify the persona (audience) that she wanted to design for.  In this case, the persona was teens.  She then created a wireframe design of the site along with a communication brief explaining the project’s intent and shared it with all of the Sno-Isle teen librarians and web developers.  Everyone took some time to make suggestions for basic changes to deal with the bare bones structure of the site, and Colleen made the recommended changes, then started working on the usability testing component of the project.  The usability project was semi-underground- Colleen didn’t want to get hung up in committees and red tape, so they did this project without asking for formal permission. 

Colleen picked four very different branches for testing, then identified a gatekeeper in each branch to connect with the community.  Gatekeepers handed out postcards to patrons asking for help testing the effectiveness of the website.  Only four people in each branch were needed for testing.  Colleen set up times to visit all four branches in one day to meet with the teen focus groups.  She brought a coworker to observe and take notes while she facilitated the sessions.  She asked 15-20 questions about the users in the focus group, and made an effort to write questions that were targeted but not leading.  An example question: ”It’s sunday night, you have a report due on the economy of Russia, what are you going to do?”  Colleen doesn’t always limit the questions to resources on the library’s website because she often finds the answers to be more revealing that way.  Another example question: “You want to ask a librarian a question, but all of the libraries are closed.  what do you do?”  A possible targeted follow up question would be: ”Can you talk to a librarian on this site?”

Testing took about a half hour per branch, with the scribe taking notes on observations, statements, etc.  Colleen noticed that teens named things differently than the library workers  For example, the librarian’s link to video was actually to a link the Sno-Isle YouTube account, teens asked “Why don’t you just call it link to youtube?”  Another language change- the librarians term was “Question of the day,” the teens said “Call it a poll!”  The space in the center of the site had random images with mouseovers- the teens asked, “why don’t you put pictures of us on the website instead?”  At the end of the user testing session, Colleen gave each participant a gift bag of stuff with her card, and told them to contact her if they thought of anything else. 

Colleen brought the data back to the office and compiled it, looking for consistent issues, etc.  She analyzed all of the issues and distilled them down to the main common themes, then used all of the information in the site redesign. 

The teen site has had three times the traffic it had before the redesign.  Colleen is now working on a redesign of the children’s site, which will be even trickier because of the broad age range for “children.”

A couple of audience suggestions for improving the process:

• Give testers a card to “tell a friend” so that they can spread the word and get more usability testers for next time.
• Have two scribes to get differing perspectives on the testing, and give them time to observe physical movements as well: where did they click first?  Did they look puzzled?  Etc.
• Create a template form for the questions and responses that the scribes can fill in as they go: one column each for the question, the response, physical reactions (clicked here first, etc.).  That way, the responses would be preformatted for Colleen.
• Share good evaluation questions among information professionals- a central clearinghouse of sample questions would be great.

You can view Sno-Isle’s redesigned teen site here.

Good session!  Thanks, Colleen!