This year I tried to focus on how any of these services could be used within Library & Learning Resources.

In a discussion with my team it was suggested it might be useful to show web 2 tools in some context, such as holiday planning.  I created a short Prezi demo on my use of a few tools in planning a day out at Warwick Castle.  I hoped this would show the variety of information that was available and how much of the content being user generated.

I aslo showed a few resources which I discovered recently,

• Zinepal – a service which allows you to turn online content to PDFs. I selected a few blog posts to create a quick and easy newsletter of the work of the elibrary team
• Kaywa QR code generator – at a recent Marketing training event QR codes were mentioned, as they provide an easy way for users of smart phones to access URLS, text, phone numbers at SMS. At University of Huddersfield library QR codes are used alongside where print journals are shelved to provide a link to the online version, within information training handouts to link out to quizzes etc. I would recomend reading Andrew Walsh’s article on QR codes for further ideas of use in libraries.  Lending Services recently added QR codes to  posters advertising e-payment service, so anyone can scan the code into their QR code reader on the phone and it will take them directly to iCity
• Tagxedo – this allows you to create different shaped word clouds presenting information in a different way. The word cloud of this blog highlighted resource & discovery as two heavily used key words.
• Animoto – a service allowing you to create short videos of photos, click here to see a short video on images from  Plans, elevations, sections, and details of the Alhambra by Jules Goury, and in 1834 and 1837 by Owen Jonens

A number of these services require you to set up an account, username and password but do provide a limited amount of functionality for free. They are however straightforward to use and you can get some great results in very little time.

Those attending the session also had the opportunity to discuss what they currently use and brainstorm on how these services could be used within L&LR. Suggestions included

• use of twitter to disseminate information such as changes to opening hours etc – @BCULibrary
• combining knowledge of essay deadlines with targeted marketing of specific services
• a flickr account for library images
• a library facebook account

Personally I think there are some really useful resources available now which can help present information in a more dynamic, colourful and interactive way  not only from a marketing point of view but also for teaching and learning. Alongside creating word clouds, presentations could be done using Prezi, videos of screencast could be included using free services such as Jing etc.

As well as presenting information there are now lots of different methods of communication, via facebook, twitter etc. Some of these services provide a great opportunity to build communities and network. They also allow for a two way dialogue, for example Wallwisher allows you to create an online notice board which may be useful during our annual ‘Have your Say’ campaign when we want our staff and students to tell us what they think about the service.

I enjoyed the sessions and hope those who attended found something that interested them or may even use.  I would welcome any suggestions of other resources you think may be of interest.

Library and learning resources have also added a few bits of useful information to the site, raising awareness of the Student Living collection and a brief tour of Kenrick Library.  There is a wealth of information on the blog and some really interesting contributions from current international students about thier experience of living and studying at Brimingham.

I recently found myself on the top floor of Kenrick library & spotted some well designed colourful end of bay signage. You can see a small selelction on the library flickr account

Recently the Wired Magazine ran a comparison on two portable e-book readers – the new Kindle from Amazon, and the Sony Touch. They came down slightly in favour of the Kindle – with its superior display and Whispernet Wireless connectivity.

But what struck me was that the smartphone users I showed these devices to, immediately touched the screen to load the book  – functionality which you get on the Sony but not the Kindle which uses a joystick (see our ‘home’ videos that demonstrate the difference : Sony Touch, Amazon Kindle ).

We know that the sales of smart phones have rocketed – and as they become more and more widespread amongst students in the next few years, the disconnect between our traditional web and commerical mobile patforms will be become more and more obvious – one of the biggest is that of interaction : touching, dragging, moving the ’stuff ‘ on the screen that you are looking at.

The coming of the iPad only accelerates this drive, to react with, to converse with, annotate, share a text : so that in an academic context learning is no longer a solitary experience.  (See how the page-turn works on an iPad here, using their iBooks app.)

Google (and other’s) answer to the iPad are on their way - so as the market for mobile reading expands this may prove interesting for established aggregators in the e-book field such as MyiLibrary, who are already moving away from their existing pdf reader because this form of delivery does not work well with mobile devices.

The race down the rabbit-hole is on ; not to replace the printed book but to make reading/teaching/discovering academic texts more tactile, and more interactive.

As Alice says, ‘what is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations’ ?

The technologies for managing these different users is already here : in his talk Ed Dee from EDINA  told us how Shibboleth authentication can be exploited for granularity – although interestingly he said that its potential was under-developed : not many institutions had gone beyond releasing basic attributes.  Matt Durant from Bath Spa took us through a demo of how Open Athens LA 2.0 would manage differing user-groups.  He focussed on the student experience, which was overlooked in my view by some of the designs of pop-up screens for e-journal articles shown by Mark Bide, from EDItEUR in his presentation on machine-readable licences.

But expressing complex licenses in XML isn’t easy : though the forthcoming JISC Collections’ online Licence Comparison and Analysis Tool will definitely help. And it also struck me that the further removed some of these user groups are from our home brand, the questions ‘What is Athens, (etc.) how do I log-in’ will be naturally even more insistent.  Once upon a time, for most a students a library was just a building, but that model is challenged not least  by the rise of mobile devices. Owen Stephens’s keynote speech Where are you: Does physical location matter in the digital world? showed how the old definitions of ‘walk-in user’ may need rethinking – and I would agree it is a confusing concept. What does walk-in really mean when most institutions have a VPN or use EZProxy to emulate their institutional proxy? When the numbers of students with smartphones wanting access to our services will soon start to take off?  When those courses who ask for ‘walk-in’ are often many miles away?’

You might be wondering what all this has got to do with the picture alongside – this particular tipple (which I can warmly recommend to you by the way) was named after ‘a man’s last sixpence, allowing him to lift the pub’s door latch and purchase a pint, whereupon he hopes to make enough friends that they may offer to buy him further rounds’ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennings_Brewery).

A wise investment methinks –using limited funds to allow us to discover more resources to share with a wider audience is better than barring the door to that audience altogether.

Summer training event

I recently attended one of this years summer training event looking at the International Student experience. It was an interesting session and thanks again to the organisers.

We had a speaker from the ASK Student Services who provided a useful overview of some of the challenges facing international students especially in the first few weeks of arrival. One of the group exercises was to list the differences an international student will face coming to the UK, ie the diet, weather, expense, social etiquette, humour etc. There is more information on the culture shock of arriving in a new country available on the ASK webpages.

We also had the opportunity to hear from an international student about his first impressions of coming to the country. The pace of life took a while to adjust to alongside the balance between an academic and social life. Something I was interested in, but unforutnately owing to time didn’t get a chance to ask, what are the highlights to studying in the UK.

After the talks we had the opportunity to reflect on what we were doing well as a service and where improvements could be made. One of the areas mentioned was the recent successful bid for extra funds to purchase books on the british culture for 3 of the libraries.

A key fustration/challenge that was raised was the language barrier,  which sometimes makes it difficult for staff to get a message across to students. While the students are required to meet a level of english, this may not always be possible especially during the early months of arriving to the UK where some of the services we provide could be of real value.

Some of the solutions suggested was to get a better understanding of the needs of international students to help inform our services. The library has recently held focus groups with international students aw well as using a social networking tool for students to raise issues and then prioritise them. This will be repeated with the new intake in Sept and then hopefully provide an interesting and useful body of evidence as well as recomendations.

Personally I think technology could also be useful, whether helping to create social networks, provision of online resource, translational tools, provision of online material in various languages and format etc

Birmingham City University, Library & Learning Resources poster

I attended a marketing training day run by Terry Kendrick for the library staff invovled in the strategic and campus marketing groups.

Being new to marketing I found it an helpful overview and an opportunity to see that many of the marketing campaigns done within Library & Learning Resources already follow much of the guidance.

The day had a full agenda looking at marketing in academic libraries, marketing to those we dont see, new technologies and quick wins on a small budget.

Some of the key issues I took away with me were

• ‘can’t make a strong enough message broad enough’, we have to use multiple methods and messages to appeal to different users, there is no single answer
• libraries need to promote their human side, it should be about the people as they are the ones adding value to the service
• people are only interested in what they need, so targeted marketing is key
• the messages should be about ‘what the library service can do for you’, for example it will save time, get better grades etc ratherthen about new purchases etc
• testomonials and stories to help sell services
• marketing is about a dialogue with customers

I think it important that marketing is part of our everyday work and not an afterthought. I also believe to continue developing, supporting and
maintaining services we need to make sure that they are being used and therefore need to engage in the full life cycle of the service.

It was an interesting day and provided a good opportunity to remind myself that the library is only a part of  the students university experience and therefore we have to be clever/sophisticated about how we broadcast our services to get maximum benefit.

desk fan from UKSG

Why my title ‘two tribes’ ? Some of us might remember the Frankie Goes to Hollywood video of ‘Two Tribes Go to War‘ – and there certainly were two ‘tribes’ of librarians and publishers in evidence upstairs on the conference platform, (whilst downstairs the real horse-trading was being done over coffee!). But there have been other more complex divisions : a librarian called Meredith Farkas blogged recently on whether EBSCO was the new ‘evil empire’ over its practice of exclusivity (’you can’t have the journal if you’re not in the club’ approach) – a practice which earlier this year drove Gale/Cengage to publish an open letter to EBSCO.

A time of war is usually a time of increased technological consumption and certainly the librarian-technologists were out in inspirational force: Richard Wallis (Talis) flagged up early on in his talk that that the ’student doesn’t care where resources come from’ & we should be using technology to bring the resource directly to them; a theme taken up by Tony Hirst (Open University) and Lucy Power(Oxford Internet Institute) as they showed how researchers use social networks and other Web 2.0 tools for resource discovery.

Looking ahead, Richard Padley also pointed the way to the benefits of the ‘semantic web‘ of open, linked data (highlighted by the recent release of free government data – an event significant enough to draw comment from EDINA, who in a recent press release seem to be holding back details of their new DIGIMAP deal whilst they absorb the impact of this.) In this session, Richard spoke tellingly for me about how commercial pressures could lead to an  ’arms race’ as each publisher creates ‘big silos of content’, with a different interface.

In terms of resource discovery, though they are all looking much the same: from what I saw of  Proquest’s new interface (for all CSA and Proquest databases) it adopts the standard ‘one search to rule them all’ ; facets down the left and a googlised ‘did you mean’ search.  The market is still dominated by the big deals, the big aggregators & their even bigger business lawyers. Ted Bergstrom spoke of the case last year when Elsevier attempted to block public release of license terms by taking Washington State University in court. Closer to home, we’ve had Murdoch’s paywall leading to titles being taken off Lexis- Nexis. It’s a shame Denis Potter is no longer with us – I would have like to have heard him respond : he was good on Murdoch.

Where are librarians in all of this? Do we retreat to the warm, comfortable bunker of the catalogue cave, to measure, count and classify? Sue White and Graham Stone gave an excellent presentation on how they had used statistics at the University of Huddersfield to ‘maximise use of their library resources’ – showing how good results correlate to good use of e-resources. One starting point for Huddersfield was their logins to ExLibris’ Metalib (doing this sort of stuff is so much easier when an institution has a login-point for e-resources).

There were other useful debates on metrics – and it was said more than once that statistics achieve a kind of ‘fetish-like status’. Hugh Look (Rightscom) drew on  Claude Levi-Strauss (the ‘father of modern anthropology’), and linked his theories of the  ’raw and the cooked’ in early societies to the ‘unmeasured’ and ‘measured’ in the world of  library metrics. He spoke of the ‘rise of the managerial class who are the main beneficiary of a measurement culture’.

It struck me that the losers in any such Cold War are the students : and the few sessions that focussed on their experience were immensely valuable. Alison Brock from the Open University looked at e-book readers – though even here the publisher’s favourite weapon  (propietary format control: you can download library content on a PC not on a Sony reader : put me in mind of why I don’t like Apple but that’s another story). The other breakout session I attended was from Philippa Sheail – a brilliant reality check: how the student doesn’t really care where this stuff comes from , and who publishes it – they just want access.

So is the case –  as Winston Churchill said – more recently in Doctor Who – of  ’KBO ‘ , doing nothing? We like the Daleks – they are our friends ? The last word went to satire and to Marc Abraham’s presentation on the IgNoble prizes – one of their ‘winners’ for the Peace Prize managed to get the following published in the Journal of Forensic Medicine for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle : “Are Full or Empty Beer Bottles Sturdier and Does Their Fracture-Threshold Suffice to Break the Human Skull? “.

Note the publisher. But before you click on the PDF, (isn’t that helpful, that the link to it comes up first) – you probably won’t get in. We’re not in that particular club.  Or, put it another way : that journal is not in our collection. It’s not the first paywall we’ve seen and it won’t be the last.

As Frankie says, ‘When two tribes go to war/A point is all you can score’.