Library as Community: reviews, ratings, feeds and the future

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Library as Community reviews, ratings, feeds
and the future

• Dinah Sanders,
• Product Manager

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• The Physical Library

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Library as collection

• Shared materials for a community
• Shared physical space for using the collection,
  sometimes including a space for lectures,
  classes, meetings
• Shared quiet space for contemplation

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Library as content provider

• Knowledge management for a community
• Known location for lectures classes
• SDI (strategic dissemination of information) and
  other outreach efforts

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• The Digital Library

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The Library Online

• Collection represented descriptively in the
  catalog
• Sometimes enhanced with guides to study or
  resource use
• Occasionally hosting special displays of seasonal
  or otherwise topical art or info

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Enhanced content by subscription

• Book jackets
• Tables of contents
• Professional reviews
• Vendors like Syndetics and Baker Taylor Content
  Cafe

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Electronic Resources

• Journal and other indexes
• Online requesting of Inter-Library Loans
• Full-text databases
• End-to-end fulfillment services online

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Feeds

• Incoming
• Local news
• Information of interest to sub-communities
• Outgoing
• News about the collection
• News about the library

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Web-based subject guides

• Easy to make with a combination of
• incoming feeds
• pre-configured search links to the catalog
• pre-configured search links to MetaFind
• links to external resources
• tips on using these tools
• Get more help from a librarian contact info or
  live chat

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• The Virtual Library

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Library as meeting place

• Communication between members about the shared
  materials within their community
• Online environment offers opportunities for
  inter-patron communication - normally hard to
  combine with the goal of providing a quiet space
• Participation creates a sense of ownership

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Symposia

• The Library as home for and expert on an
  instituition or communitys knowledge.
• Locally-produced materials archived and shared in
  an easily-searched interface for ongoing use.
• Direct access for authorized community members to
  add materials themselves
• Accommodates multiple subcommunities with
  different access permissions

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Patron Ratings

• Free feature, first available in Release 2005.
• Ability for patrons to express their overall
  opinion about catalog materials
• Does not require staff moderation

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Community Reviews

• New product with Release 2006 (requires WebPAC
  Pro)
• Public component
• Viewing reviews on record display
• Writing reviews
• My Reviews area in patron record display with
  (library optional) ability to delete past
  reviews
• Staff component
• Approving or deleting new reviews
• Searching existing reviews by record, patron or
  review number

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Community Reviews
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Community Manager - Reviews
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Tagging

• Added by users (may or may not be moderated)
• Folksonomy
• Emergent classification - very low entry cost
• Augments, not replaces, controlled vocabularies
• Highly responsive to change
• Supports unlimited paths of access
• Supports disagreement over aboutness

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Want to try out tagging?

• Flickr.com - photo sharing
• Del.icio.us and BlinkList.com - bookmark sharing
• Technorati.com - leverages tags in blogs for
  live web searches of the current online
  conversation
• Gmail.com - email with tags instead of folders
• LibraryThing.com - catalog your personal library
  with tags
• PennTags - an experiment with data extraction
  from library catalog

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What tagging can do for library interfaces

• Enables new finding tools
• Bridges between formal and informal vocabularies
• Invests community directly in the collection

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Millennium Encore

• Innovatives new discovery services platform now
  in development.
• Real-time Millennium integration
• Simultaneous import of Research Pro and WebBridge
  search results
• Faceted results display
• RightResult relevance ranking
• Community tagging, ratings, reviews
• Visual shelf browse
• Apache-based technology

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• Questions?
• dsanders_at_iii.com