up2date

Another cheerful study of link rot

Thanks to LJ infoDOCKET : "Georgetown Law Library Finds 38 Percent of Online Documents Disappear from Web Pages Within Five Years"

Need I say more?

"3 Ways to Engage Your Audiences Through Social Media"

From the Book Business blog :

"...This column will address the goals, the voice and some fun strategies to help you leverage social media tools to boost your sales and community...."

"Mobile: The Web All Over Again?"

From blog Book Business, this is an editorial by Noelle Skodzinski :

"... John Morse  makes a really interesting point: He suggests, "Be as bold with mobile apps today as we were with the Web 10 years ago." The Web was a new frontier, where questions abounded and risk lurked around every corner. It is, in its premise, very similar to mobile.

...

Arguments abounded in the industry about whether to put print content (mainly newspapers and magazines) online for free, and doing so was, in fact, all that some publications did. We know where that landed the publishing industry.

...

John Morse's comparison between the Web and mobile is an eye opener. It also screams "caution!" to me. So many publishers messed up on the Web, ignoring it or doing very little with it, while the rest of the information world went Web-wild. Other publishers jumped in head first, though sometimes blindly, but got a head start on their competition and built a strong online foundation for growth over the past 10 years."

"Usability Testing for e-Resource Discovery"

From the latest issue of JAL :

Usability Testing for e-Resource Discovery: How Students Find and Choose e-Resources Using Library Web Sites

Amy Frylow and Linda Rich

ABSTRACT In early 2010, library staff at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Ohio designed and conducted a usability study of key parts of the library web site, focusing on the web pages generated by the library's electronic resources management system (ERM) that list and describe the library's databases. The goal was to discover how users find and choose e-resources and identify ways the library could improve access to e-resources through its web site. This article outlines the usability study conducted at BGSU, presents its conclusions about how students at BGSU find and choose databases, contextualizes these findings with other current research about user behavior, and makes recommendations for increasing student use of library e-resources.

...

"Screencasting - DIY Tools"

Thanks (again) to the Columbia EnhancED blog :

"...

The services below will work on a PC or a Mac and are free to use:

Screenr: (from Articulate)

• Movie time limit: up to 5 minutes
• Choose the size of your recording frame (you can record a section of your screen rather than the whole thing)
• Screencasts can be shared on Twitter or Facebook, published to YouTube, or embedded on a website
• Screencasts to be viewed on iPhone/iPad

Screenjelly:

• Movie time limit: up to 3 minutes
• Full screen only
• Integrates with twitter and facebook, but no embed code or file exporting.
• A Screenjelly "record" button can be embedded on a website, allowing visitors to record their own screencasts from your site.

Screencast-o-matic:

• Movie time limit: up to 15 minutes
• Choose the size of your recording frame
• View your screencast on the Screencast-o-matic site, upload it to YouTube HD, or export it as a movie file (MP4, AVI, or FLV).
• Screencast-o-matic also integrates webcam video into the screencast.
• "Pro" option ($9/yr) expands the recording limit to 60 minutes per screencast and adds extra features, including editing tools and removal of the watermark on exported files.

..."

eye-tracking study on the effects of page layout on how users process search results

From the OCLC press release :

New OCLC eye-tracking study reports the effects of page layout on how users process search results

...

Results indicate that the description that accompanies the title of an entry was very important to users when looking for a book, but less so when searching for articles. Prasse discusses how subtle differences in page layout can have a major impact on what users first look at on a results page, and for how long. He also explores the idea of "attentional slicing," where users look for key features of an object, rather than the object itself as a possible explanation of his findings. Other results include information about facets, summaries and other elements of the two services he compared, WorldCat.org and GoogleBooks.

"Comparison of User Search Behaviors with Classic Online Catalogs and Discovery Platforms"

New in the latest Charleston Advisor :

 Ballard, Terry. "Comparison of User Search Behaviors with Classic Online Catalogs and Discovery Platforms." Charleston Advisor. 12, 3 (2011): 65-66.

 

Web Analytics in libraries

From the ALA TechSource blog :

"...

In their upcoming ALA TechSource Workshop, Paul Signorelli and Char Booth will show you how to make web analytics work for the library. I had a chance to ask them some questions about web analytics generally, and what they'll be covering in their workshop.

Dan Freeman: So can you tell me in a few quick sentences why you think web analytics are important to librarians?

..."

report on "How Different Generations Use the Internet"

From the ResourceShelf :

Generations 2010

HTML Version (Searchable) ||| PDF Version (29 pages)

From the Overview Page:

The dominance of the Millennial generation that we documented in our first “Generations” report in 2009 has slipped in many activities.

Milliennials, those ages 18-33, remain more likely to access the internet wirelessly with a laptop or mobile phone. In addition, they still clearly surpass their elders online when it comes to many communication- and entertainment-related activities, such as using social network sites and playing games online.

However, internet users in Gen X (those ages 34-45) and older cohorts are more likely than Millennials to engage in several online activities, including visiting government websites and getting financial information online.

Finally, the biggest online trend is that, while the very youngest and oldest cohorts may differ, certain key internet uses are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. These online activities include seeking health information, purchasing products, making travel reservations, and downloading podcasts.

A Few Stats From the Report:

...

+ Few of the activities covered in this report have decreased in popularity for any age group, with the notable exception of blogging. ...

...

+ About six in ten American adults (59%) go online wirelessly, either through their smartphones or through a wireless card in their laptop.3 Adults age 45 and younger are the most likely to connect to the internet with a laptop, cell phone, or other internet-connected mobile device, as 82% of Millennials and 71% of Gen X connect that way. Only 9% of the G.I. Generation go online wirelessly.

+ Email and search engine use remain the backbone of online activities, with 88% of the oldest generation using email. Communicating by email is not as popular with teens, however; only 73% of teens use email.

Full Text HTML Version (Searchable) ||| Complete PDF Version (29 pages)

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

new issue of JSlit.com

Two articles of interest from this issue :

Impact of Electronic Services on Users: A Study.

Quick Response Code in library services

 

From Lorcan Dempsey's blog, an interesting perspective on marketing an organization on the web (er, Google) :

Two websites I regularly look at are the The Guardian and Times Higher Education. In my lazy way I will often just pop the names into Google when looking for them. I have been interested in how they are characterised in Google results, based on what they put in the Meta description tags.

...

good example of a web exhibition

Thanks to the fluxeum twitter feed for pointing to the new exhibit on Monet at the Grand Palais. It's a really sharp on-line rendition (if you ignore not being able to turn off the music-cum-wallpaper).

"Students shun expensive library services"

Not a new thought, but nice to have (yet another)  study that backs it up (thanks to the ENSSIB blog for pointing it out) :

"Students prefer to use Google and YouTube rather than expensive electronic resource library systems for information searches, a study has revealed. Researchers at Middlesex University told the 17th annual conference of the Association for Learning Technology at the University of Nottingham last week that students find many university and college systems too complex, time-consuming and cumbersome for their research.

Such problems create barriers to access and distract them from critically analysing and evaluating resources, so they resort to more familiar approaches.

...

The report, Electronic Resource Discovery Systems: Do they help or hinder in searching for academic material?, makes a series of recommendations for better support, training and access to information retrieval systems that are designed using common criteria and are easier to access.
Information literacy sessions should be an integral part of students' academic programmes of study, concludes the report."

New Eye Tracking Study

From the ResourceShelf :

"New Eye Tracking Study: How Searchers Look at the Search Results on a Search Results Page, META Descriptions Very Important

From Search Engine Roundtable by Barry Schwartz:

Dynamical.biz translated a new eye tracking study done Spanish (PDF here) of how searchers look at the search results on a search results page.

[Clip]

The one thing that really stands out to many SEOs [and most likely for others who create web pages] is the META description, or the search engine snippet. In all types of queries, the meta description is fixated over more and more time is spent looking at it. More than the big blue hyper link and more than the URL.

The post also includes a helpful statistical chart and a graphic that provides a breakdown of the components of a result found on a search results page.

..."

Interesting library "Knowledge Portal"

This site is the new "Knowledge Portal" for the ETH-Bibliothek -- Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich/Swiss Federal Institute of Techology Zurich, also available in German :

"The Knowledge Portal uses modern search engine technology to offer an entirely new way of accessing all kinds of information resources. The central search box that is integrated in the new website gives you direct access to about 27 million documents: books from the NEBIS libraries network, full-text documents from the ETH E-Collection, retro.seals.ch or the articles database DADS, licensed e-books, images from the Online Image Archival Database and videos from the ETH Zurich Multimedia Portal."

(Thanks to jpaccart for the tip.)

Can we explain info. lit. online?

From the latest issue of the JAL :

"The Readability of Information Literacy Content on Academic Library Web Sites"

Adriene Lim

Associate University Librarian, Portland State University and MLIP doctoral candidate at Simmons College, Portland, OR, and Boston, MA, USA

Abstract

This article reports on a study addressing the readability of content on academic libraries' Web sites, specifically content intended to improve users' information literacy skills. Results call for recognition of readability as an evaluative component of text in order to better meet the needs of diverse user populations.

"Using Cloud Services for Library IT Infrastructure"

From EDUCAUSE :

Using Cloud Services for Library IT Infrastructure

Title:	Using Cloud Services for Library IT Infrastructure (ID: CSD5889)
Source:	The Code4Lib Journal
Abstract:	Author Erik Mitchell discusses cloud computing and libraries. Cloud computing comes in several different forms and this article documents how service, platform, and infrastructure forms of cloud computing have been used to serve library needs. Following an overview of these uses the article discusses the experience of one library in migrating IT infrastructure to a cloud environment and concludes with a model for assessing cloud computing.

WorldCat.org adds name of book to static URL

From the ResourceShelf :

"...For example, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/287628 becomes http://www.worldcat.org/title/catcher-in-the-rye/oclc/287628.. [Neat] Title-only URLs, i.e., http://www.worldcat.org/title/catcher-in-the-rye will also work. If you’ve coded pages with the “old format” they will continue to work...."

Journal of the future is here (?)

From Inside HigherEd :

"...the Society of Architectural Historians has developed a new platform for its online journal that it hopes will close the gap between reading about important architectural examples and experiencing them.

The society -- along with its publishing partners, the University of California Press and JSTOR -- today unveiled a new platform for the online version of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, which it built through a series of grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The online version, dubbed JSAH Online, will support presentation methods -- such as video, virtual modeling and digital mapping -- that academics have employed for some time, but could show off only in venues with the capacity to handle to multimedia exhibitions, such as live demonstrations and museum installations.

..."

Visualizing data

This is a very interesting 'periodic table' of data-visualization techniques. I had no idea there were so many!

If you mouse-over an 'element,' it will show you an example of its use.