CIL2007: Innovative Tools for Reference Service

Presented by Tomalee Doan and Hal Kirkwood of Purdue University.

Kirkwood discussed two tools used at Purdue:

• MyMel Toolbar — built using mylibrarytoolbar.com (now conduit.com?) which works with Firefox and IE. Search catalog, OpenWorldCat, journal finder from toolbar. Allows links to other databases, RSS feed reader, email notification, weather info.Good usage: 603 downloads in 18 months. Since early April, their library is averaging 217 users, 750 transactions per day through the toolbar. This even works with Vista.

  The Conduit.com toolbar is a free service paid for by click-through ‘featured links’ displayed on a default web search. Searches of other sites, such as the catalog or journal finder are not cluttered with ads at this point.

• CMAP — Free download that displays concepts visually.

Doan presented the following:

• Footprints database used to track reference questions — links I found suggested this was free-to-try, but not freeware or open-source.
• Mentioned that use of Meebo has greatly increased IM traffic to Reference.

CIL2007: Improving Content with Customer Conversations

Rich Wiggins of Michigan State University presented.

By analyzing your search logs, you can tell what your users are seeking and how to tune your site to give them what they seek the most. Blogger’s note: this analysis should include site ‘hit’ logs as well as search logs.

Search engines can confuse low-value content with vital content. Jakon Nielsen estimates that half of website users go immediately to a website’s search engine to find what they’re looking for.

Michigan State rolled out its “Best Bets” service. Did this by studying the most popular unique searches, mapped these to appropriate URL. Compaints went down! Developers continued to watch, learn, and respond.

Google is training users to expect high relevancy results from a search box! Check out Duke’s home page to see one university that has responded to this!

The long tail (Zipf Curve) for searches: most of the executed searches occur for the same thing and are one or two words long.

1. 7218 campus map
2. 5859 map
3. 5184 im west
4. 4320 library
5. 3745 study abroad
6. …

Top 221 searches accounted for 40 percent of all searches at MSU.

Which common queries retrieve zero results? Which results are most frequently clicked-through per query?

What can you improve?

* Interface Design
* Retrieval algorithm modification
* Navigational design
* Metadata development
* Content development
* Spell checking for search engine

MSU builds an A-Z index automatically based on frequent queries.

Wiggins and Louis Rosenfeld are collaborating on a new book, “Search Analytics for your Site: Conversations with your Customers” due in 2007.

CIL2007: Reinventing the library in the Internet era

Rebecca Kahl of the Cuyahoga County Public Library:

Sought to create a portal experience with their website

Clyde Miles of Optiem:

• Discovery
  • using focus groups (internal and customer)
  • best practices analysis of others’ websites
  • worked up written recommendations and wireframes
• Strategy
  • create min-portals by subject, demographics
  • utiltize CMS system, specifically, Ektron
  • ultilanguage capability, accessibility
• Design – make it visually engaging
• Development – search engine optimization, adding functionality, online store
• Launch and promote!

CIL2007: Trends in Mobile Tools and Apps for Libraries

Presented by Megan Fox of Simmons College. Slideshow at: web.simmons.edu/~fox/mobile

• 75% of all U.S. adults have mobile phone service; 1 in 8 households have no landline any longer.
• 90% of college students have cell phones

Sony Playstation Portables currently selling with 6 months of free T-Mobile wifi access for ~$150. A cheaper alternative to PDAs or smartphones?

The .mobi domain has been established for websites designed for mobile devices — BusinessWeek.mobi, CNN.mobi are two examples.

• Ball State University Library has also established a mobile interface at: www.bsu.edu/libraries/mobile which includes videos about services and instructional sessions.
  
• OPAC interfaces: Innovative AirCat, SirsiDynix and others are developing mobile versions of their online catalog interfaces.
• Google, Yahoo, and Answers.com have customized their search engines to display on mobile devices.
• Mobilicious (for del.icio.us) , YouTube, SecondLife, and MySpace are following suit…

RSS feeds can help bridge the gap from web to mobile. Mobi Reads, FeedBeep, and Google Reader are some service providers…

Get content via SMS/Texting — which Google’s been doing for awhile. See http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/sms/ for details…

Free e-audiobooks for download at LibriVox.org.

Use of ’tiling’ for input may gain prominence, instead of transcoding or modifying webpage display. This would use a zoomed-out version of an entire webpage, users then click on a section to zoom in.

Libraries shouldn’t impose blanket bans on cell phones, since these multifunctional devices are useful information resources — texting, mobile web, etc.