Random Quotes from Four Desks

Submitted by nina on Wed, 06/05/2013 - 12:39

Cleaning out my desk today, I came across a small bundle of paper that I've been carrying around for four jobs now. It's time to recycle it, but I figured I could use this fancy new interwebs thing to record what the pieces of paper say. I've added notes as to when and why I kept these bits of paper as well as put them into chronological order.

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission." -Eleanor Roosevelt

A Marketing Win from an ILS Vendor

Submitted by nina on Tue, 06/04/2013 - 15:47

So, maybe I'm feeling a touch guilty about pulling 3,000 people to this site to blame ILSs for my departure from the profession, but I've got to hand it to Innovative Interfaces, Inc., for a recent marketing push. If you're not a III customer, lemme catch you up: they have been working hard for over a year now moving their customer libraries to Sierra, a new backend services platform.

Drops Match, Runs Off Bridge

Submitted by nina on Wed, 04/03/2013 - 16:24

So today I let go of a project that has been a huge part of my professional life since 2006. At that time, I had just started my job at the University of Colorado Denver's Auraria Library. As a new hire, I was a librarian and a member of the tenure-track faculty and thus looking for venues in which to cultivate research and service commitments, which accounted for 40% of my performance plan. An opportunity arose to guest edit an issue of Colorado Libraries, our state association's quarterly journal.

Designing and Developing Library Intranets Published Early!

Submitted by nina on Fri, 08/31/2012 - 15:18

Get copies for the holidays! Gift wrap available! So happy to see that Designing and Developing Library Intranets was released on August 20th! This great resource is the result of the collaboration of over a dozen wonderful colleagues, originally published as a special double issue of The Journal of Web Librarianship (issue 4, volumes 2/3). I'm reminded seeing it today of the great experience editing the contributions from these wonderful people!

Filtering Out Library Staff Web Use in Google Analytics

Submitted by nina on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 15:29

As more and more libraries strive to achieve a data-driven culture, it's important to ensure that the data we're relying on is reporting what we think it's reporting about our users. While library staff are users, too, they're superusers, and their behavior in our online environments is not typical of the majority of our customers. So, how can we be sure that we're getting accurate data from web analytics software reports to improve the end user experience? The answer is filtering staff use out of our web site analytics data.

A Design-by-Committee Model that Actually Sorta Worked

Submitted by nina on Tue, 03/13/2012 - 00:25

Library web developers typically dread decision-making meetings, because when it comes to the library's web site, everyone has strong, and almost always differing, opinions. Determining a process that is rigorous, yet fair, and allows everyone's voice be heard is a challenge. The result is all-too-often a "design-by-committee" disaster: a web site design and information architecture based on internal politics rather than end user wants and needs. No one is happy with the final product, and everyone who was involved in the meetings just wishes for those precious hours of life back.

An Accessible III Login Widget

Submitted by nina on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 18:29

Since III doesn't "provide third-party server support," here's the HTML form code to create an accessible (i.e., Section 508) account login for your Innovative Interfaces, Inc., catalog. I created this login widget based on the responses we received in a recent web use survey at the Arapahoe Library District. We asked the open-ended question, "I most often use the library web site to:" and 58% percent of the respondents indicated some function related to their library account.

Tips for Creating Drupal Content Types for Library Web Sites

Submitted by nina on Mon, 01/30/2012 - 13:13

One of the most difficult things about migrating a library web site from a static or non-CMS site into Drupal is getting your head around custom content types. Drupal comes with two content types out-of-the-box-"article" and "basic page"-but the possibilities for creating custom web site content are limitless. Because it's so easy to create custom content types, it's easy to overthink and end up with too many.
 

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