I’ve been a presentin’ madman lately, first with a talk for the wonderful 2nd LJ/SLJ eBook Summit and then four, yes 4, presentations at Internet Librarian 2012 in Monterey. Now I’m catching my breath here in Washington DC where the DPLA meetings are going to be taking place over the next couple of days, and I thought I’d take a minute to share the slides and some brief thoughts about what I’ve been up to over the last week or two. Forgive me if this comes off as a journal entry, but- well it kind of is a journal entry. Take it or leave it.
First presentation was the LJ/SLJ eBook Summit talk of Oct 12, called “Library Service Models in the Digital Transition: From Read to Read/Write”. In brief, I spoke to the idea that a proliferation of digital content -both eBooks and web content- is going to have a lasting effect on both the activities that libraries support and library facilities themselves. I don’t believe that the systems of branch libraries that replicate collections of physical content are going to be as sustainable in coming years. They already aren’t: check out the branch library closures across the country. I also don’t believe libraries will continue to communicate unique value in their communities unless they support knowledge production with the same commitment they now pledge to knowledge consumption. In the presentation I showed off the Uni project as a portable, flexible delivery system for physical content and learning spaces, I showed of the Library Lab as a modular support system for content creation, and then I presented the idea of a distributed library system that offers these differing kinds of services in different locations based on needs assessment.
Then it was down to Monterey for the Internet Librarian conference: a favorite both because of subject matter and the exceptional location. First I helped out Jason Clark of Montana State University with a 3 hour preconference session on mobile design, development, and strategy. I love this format: we had 14 people from very different library backgrounds in the room, and because it was a small group we were able to be flexible with the class and teach to their individual needs. Very satisfying. I hope the class enjoyed it as much as I did.
Next was a presentation about lessons learned thus far from the Scan Jose mobile history app/site/Layar. Scan Jose has been interesting. Half technology experiment, half storytelling experiment, all funded by an IMLS grant, for me and the rest of our group at San Jose Public Library it has truly been a learning experience. It’s still totally beta-ish, with glitches and some need for attention to detail on my part, but it is pretty cool. Take a look on your phone at the walking tours if you get a chance but beware: this truly is a hyperlocal app and if you are in Australia it will try to give you walking directions to the points in San Jose. Anyways, this presentation was supposed to be about usability testing for mobile apps, and I thought when I proposed the session I’d have done a lot of that. In reality I/we haven’t done much of that yet so I spoke of all the scenario prototyping and storyboarding that could be a load of fun to do (and I expect to do) someday. Check out the slides below.
Third at Internet Librarian was a talk about user experience design. I spoke about the order of perception and used an image of a bear to show the way that images and labels can interact with one another on a web page to create different meaning and different priorities. There’s a lot of fascinating theory behind user interface design and I jump at opportunities to ramble on about it. It’s also a great opportunity to show slides of pretty weird stuff, and then explain to the audience that you are showing them that weird stuff for some high-brow conceptual purpose. I was psyched to get away with the clip art bear and puddle of blood. I followed up the conceptual bit with a problem I’m hoping to solve on the San Jose Public Library website: weaving together an information architecture fro both browsers of our unique content as well as searchers, who use the site as a utility. Some screen shots below…
Last and the very opposite of least was a presentation with Chris Noll about the Library Lab. It was really energizing to get an audience who was excited and engaged in that project. I won’t go into detail about it here, since there’s an early PLA Bog post detailing what it was and is, and because I expect I’ll be writing a lot more about it in the not-too-distant future.
So now, abruptly and without much rest, it’s off to the DPLA meetings. Stay tuned for updates!
