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Australian Library search boxes in Facebook

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Is Deakin University Library the first Australian University Library to offer a library search box for users to install on their Facebook profile? Looks nice.

deakingfacebook.jpg

 

Yarra Plenty Regional Libraries have had a Facebook Page for a month or so, and released their search box ap. on December 6th . I had trouble installing it when I tried, but it may have been a temporary bug.

Does anyone know of any other Australian libraries who have Facebook Pages or have written a search box application?

 

Five social software sites that libraries shouldn’t ignore

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Here are the slides from my plenary session at the “Library of the Future” forum for the Learning Resources Network Services Network, hosted by Challenger TAFE here in Fremantle – Five Social Software Sites that Libraries Shouldn’t Ignore.

The presentation used a lot of pictures of monkeys to look at:

1. Why should libraries care about social software?

2. What is social software?

3. Massive content sharing sites

4. Five sites and:

  • The “so what” of the site
  • Usage
  • Sites with a similar purpose

5. Sites covered:

6. Not in so much detail, but libraries should know about

7. Information storage and retrieval is via social elements, not controlled vocabulary

8. Social does not mean trivial

9. Social elements

Used Adventures of Superlibrarian clip on YouTube as an example

  • Profiles
  • Subscribing
  • Friends/contacts
  • Internal messages
  • Groups
  • Tagging
  • Rating
  • Favouriting
  • Commenting
  • Related items
  • Responses
  • Remixing

10. How libraries are using these sites – two examples of each, but extra slides with more examples at end of slideshow.

YouTube

Flickr

del.icio.us

Facebook

11. Checklist for action

  • Ensure reasonable public access to these sites in your library
  • Ensure your staff know how to search content on these sites
  • Check your library’s web presence
  • Use social software to collaborate and have conversations……with other librarians about where libraries fit in this space

12. Finally, when considering social software and your library, remember that it’s not all about what suits US, but what suits our USERS.

Videoblogging using Facebook and Viddler

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Last night I saw that Connie Crosby had made a video straight into Facebook using her Macbook, so I installed the Facebook Video application and made a little movie for my own profile using my webcam.

Today I noticed that 6 of my friends have now added the ap, so I wanted to make another little video asking them to hurry up and start posting videos. When I tried to do this, there was an error saving…and by the fifth time of saying the same thing, I was sounding a little loopy.

I decided to try out viddler, which has a facility to record staight to the site. I used the “highest” quality setting, but even then the audio pickup is not as good as Facebook.

Maybe I need to get a microphone like they used for the podcast Lachie recorded in the Librarians series tonight. (Dear world, please note..they showed librarians running an English as a Second Language class, dealing with porn on public internet PCs, podcasting and handling graffiti on the building..welcome to libraryland)

I can understand how people could get addicted to daily videoblogging. Here’s the results of my viddler upload.

Leisure Reading Collections in academic libraries

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Facebook lets you install all sorts of third party applications. So far I am half way through a game of scrabble with one Facebook friend, have accidentally zombie bitten an overseas University Librarian, deliberately drawn grafitti on someone’s wall, laughed at my daily unshelved cartoon and have thrown virtual food at friends.

I like the “Question” application. It lets me ask a question that then appears in my friends newsstreams. My last question produced such, well – right- answers that I’m sharing them. I have permission from the contributors.

The question was:

Should we have leisure reading collections in academic libraries?

Here’s the answers:

Why not?

Yes! The academic library I used to work in had one. It was popular.

Definitely yes, subject to space and budget. We shouldn’t be as general as a public library, but if there’s something we think a good portion of our particular users would appreciate, that should be ok.

Sure! Students have some leisure time, why shouldn’t they spend it reading? Also, it’s a good way to draw staff into the library.

I can’t imagine a leisuire activity that isn’t up for critical analysis, so of course we should! 🙂

Yep! MPOW has a popular reading collection, that features on the holds list quite frequently. We have a lot of international students living on campus or very close by and the Library is not just used for study, but as their “family” room.

There is no such thing as pure leisure reading I think – everything can spark off a thought, reflection, or new discovery. If space permits, then by all means.

Absolutely! Everyone needs leisure reading and for many their academic library is the only library they access.

One person’s academic treatise is another person’s leisure reading.

Working with the users’ tools

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Like Mr Stephen Fry, many users have several “home pages” that they go to every time they open their browsers. Chances are that for most of our users, our library web site is not among them.

As a very nice student politely told me, when most of them access our library site, they do not come through our home page and then take the carefully crafted and orderly route we’ve crafted for them – they bookmark the “databases” and the “catalogue search” page and only ever use these.

Many people use a web browser and some kind of portal/personal home page ( iGoogle, Facebook, Netvibes) as a starting point these days. What if libraries worked with our users to give them the tools to use our library resources without leaving these familiar home pages? Well, the tools below do just that…and many of them allow your library to join in so your own users can play too…

1) LibX – A Firefox extension for libraries

Created by Virginia Tech, LibX allows you to search the holdings of your library and much, much more, straight from your browser. I was going to summarise its features, but it’s packed full of such goodness that I’ve used the description from their site:

  • Toolbar & right-click context menu: Direct access to the catalog via a toolbar and context (right-click) menu – automatic construction of simple or advanced searches. Search by entering terms, select and right-click, or select and drag-and-drop without having to navigate to the library catalog page. LibX supports Millennium, Voyager, Aleph, Sirsi, Dynix/IPAC, and user-defined catalogs.
  • Adaptive context menus: The context menu changes automatically depending on what is selected. For instance, if an ISBN is selected, the context menu will offer the option to search directly using that specific identifier. Currently recognized are CrossRef DOIs, ISBNs, and ISSNs, and PubMed IDs.
  • OpenURL support: OpenURL is a standard that helps your library get you to appropriate resources, including the full text of journals to which it subscribes. LibX gives direct access to your institution’s OpenURL resolver, which can directly point you at the full text of an article you are looking for. (OpenURL resolvers are often called “Find it@”, “Article Finder”, “Article Linker”, “WebBridge”, “Get it@”, “Find Fulltext”, “Article Express” or similar names.) OpenURL can work well in connection with Google Scholar.
  • Google Scholar Support (The ‘Magic Button’): Select text and search for the selected text on Google Scholar. In addition, LibX will read Scholar’s results for you, determine whether the paper was found and if so, ask the OpenURL resolver for a paid-for copy, should you not have access to the copy to which Scholar links. You can use this feature even from inside a PDF, which makes retrieving papers referenced in a PDF file a snap.
    If your library has not subscribed to Scholar’s services, see Question 11 in the FAQ: Can I get the Google Scholar search to work even if my institution has not registered with Google?
  • Web Localization via Embedded Cues: LibX places localized cues in web pages you visit if the library has resources related to that page. Whenever you see the cue, click on the link to look at what the library has to offer. For instance, book pages at Amazon or Barnes & Noble contain cues that can check whether the library has the book you are looking to buy. Other pages that contain cues are Google, Yahoo! Search, the NY Times Book Review, and others. See the screencasts in Demo 3 for examples of this cool feature.
  • Autolinking: Based on Jesse Ruderman’s autolinking script, LibX automatically links ISBNs, ISSNs, DOIs, and other identifiers to the catalog or OpenURL resolver.
  • Off-campus access via EZProxy or WAM: Support for off-campus access to licensed resources, if your institution uses EZ Proxy or III’s WAM. You may reload a page through the proxy, or follow a link via the proxy, making it appear as though you are coming from an on-campus computer. This features gives you access to resources to which only on-campus users have access.
  • Support for COinS: LibX supports COinS, which can turn hidden tags inserted by web site authors or publishers into actionable OpenURLs links that allow a user to download the full text of an item. More information on COinS.
  • Support for xISBN: Support for OCLC’s xISBN: find a book, given an ISBN, even if the library holds this book under a different ISBN.

2) A Library specific Toolbar for Firefox

If LibX doesn’t suit your library, you could create from scratch a Firefox toolbar for your users to download and install. You could put in a search box or RSS feeds, a chat box or bookmarks to useful sites.

Guus van den Brekel from the University Medical Centre library in Groningen has created a slideshow about library specific toolbars – how to make them and why – The Library Toolbar in Detail. This tutorial from Jonah Bishop at Born Geek is a very good detailed starting point: Firefox Toolbar Tutorial.

3) A google widget for the google home page

You could use google widgets to create a search box for your library, then offer your users the code so they could embed it in their iGoogle page.

The University Of Western Australia has a nice example of this, on their Library Catalogue Tools page.

4) An OpenSearch plugin

You can give your users a plugin that adds your library as an option in the drop down search box at the top right of their Firefox or IE7 browser.

Here’s an example that one of our IT guys made for my library at Murdoch University, Murdoch Catalogue plugin.

5) Facebook catalogue search widget

Now that Facebook allows external applications, and it may be useful as a portal, you could create an specifically for your library, like this one from . This Facebook applicaton from library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain adds a small widget to your Facebook page, allowing you to search the catalogue and chat with an online librarian. David Ward has released the code he used to make it, and it has already been copied by to make a Facebook ap for Hennepin Public Library.

6) LibGuides Facebook application

This is a paid service from Springshare that

enables you to access the content from your library inside of facebook. Read your course-related library Guides, get research help, chat with reference librarians, or search the library catalog using LibGuides.

I’m a bit wary of something you need to pay for when you can make it for free, but for libraries without developers (ie. most of us) this may be an option. You can find information on the Facebook Libguides page.

7) Embed code for catalogue searchbox on MySpace

You could provide users with a paragraph of code that they could use to embed on their home page – particularly useful for MySpace Users . Morris Library at Southern Illinois University, Cabondale provides this for their users (as well as a LibX download) on their Library Downloads page.

While these types of services won’t be useful for all our users, and will be unintelligible for many, we should know how to create them now, so that we can provide quality service to our early adopters.

Another look at Facebook

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Around June last year, I set up a Facebook account. Why? Because – like the twitter account we set up in December – CW was playing there and I wanted to be cool too. I didn’t think much more about it until two or three weeks back when someone found my profile and friended me.

Facebook is like “grown up” MySpace. Initially membership was restricted only to people with an .edu prefix in their email, as it was aimed at making sub networks based on school/university populations. Now membership is open and you can join a regional network if you don’t want to /can’t join an educational network. I suspect this changed last year when students who outgrew MySpace were transferring to Facebook, but some were excluded due to their email address.

Three things I discovered delighted me:

1) There are 8 groups on my local university network: Murdoch Ice Hockey Team , Murdoch Ultimate , R.U.M. (Rugby Union at Murdoch) , The Iron Chefs of Murdoch , The really really really ridiculously good looking people in murdoch , ABA [aussie bogans annonymous] , MMA (Murdoch Malaysian Association) and the Wii Bowling 240+ club . There are quite a few more which are global with the name “Murdoch” in them, including the Murdoch uni students past or present (2 members), but most of them are protesting about media ownership byMr-ex-Aussie-Rupert.

2) There are 67 groups with “library or librarian” in the title. Most are based on undergrad humour, eg. my goal in life is to bang in the library. , but there is a smattering of vaguely serious and “friends of the library” type groups. Cruelly, the Im a librarian, but im not old, i dont own many cats, and work nights. group appears to be a high school prank….otherwise I would have jumped on that bandwagon.

3) It is easy-peasy to find people you already know using the invite option. If you nominate a Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Gmail or MSN address book, it will check to see whether those people have Facebook pages. Then you can just tick the boxes and select “send”.

I was really, really irritated by the difficulty of searching for groups or within your own network. A search for “University of Western Australia” on the Search Groups page retrieved Murdoch University Alumni. (63 members). A search for “murdoch alumni” did not. I tried to find out how many profiles were within the Murdoch network and I just couldn’t work out how to do it. Any one fare better than I did? Tell me the trick…please.