Tag: lita2007

Darci Hanning, Oregon State Library, Sharon Morris, Colorado State Library, Kristi Lindsey, Penrose Community Library District, Beverly J. Obert, Rolling Prairie Library District, Tine Walczyk, Texas State Library and Archives Commission Plinkit is a program for developing database-driven web sites for libraries, that uses open-source software, and is free to the libraries who use them. Individual library projects are created with training and support by librarians from statewide/regional library organizations, using statewide funding. They work together to bring this resource into existence for the benefit of small towns, particularly in rural areas. The presenters all find it gratifying to help small libraries develop web sites with the Plinkit project. Each of the presenters gave a description of Plinkit from a different perspective. We heard viewpoints of trainers, administrators, and a librarian from a small town; all who are involved in using the Plinkit in different ways.

Presenter: Sean Cordes, Coordinator of Instruction Services, Malpass Library, Western Illinois University Libraries October 6, 2007, LITA National Forum Sean Cordes was previously Instructional Technology Library at Parks Library, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. He holds masters degrees in educational technology, and in library and information science from the University of Missouri. His responsibilities at Western Illinois include academic web designer, technology librarian and instruction coordinator. This presentation describes the rationale and practical considerations that went into creating the Iowa State library’s Media Production Services (MPS), a video editing studio that allows students to digitize, manipulate and create media, DVDs, slide shows, etc., over a one to one and a quarter year time period, including how the library and IT came together as a group to define roles and policies. The slides include visuals and photographs of the area, equipment, and signage. Why provide media production services for…

Presenters: Danielle Cunniff Plumer, David Dorman, Mark Phillips. This session reviewed three different ways or projects that provide faceted searching. Danielle Plumer – Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative. http://texasheritageonline.org/ The Initiative is a statewide plan that unifies previously created pockets, not a centralized database. They have an OAI harvester (to be described later by Mark Phillips), a real time search, and soon – web search. There are metadata synchronization issues, item description issues, and differences in how the different systems display information. So they assign “Collection Level Metadata” to make facets in an institution “profile” that help the user narrow searches and identify the institutions. David Dorman – Faceted Searching in a Metasearch Environment: The Index Data Experience. Index Data (http://www.indexdata.dk/) is a 13 year old company that develops and supports open source software. Talked about a product called MasterKey which searches multi datasets and provides search results with a left…

Library-Wide IT Proficiency Preconference Presented by Brenda Chawner and Grace Sines This session was very informative. The preconference covered technology competency frameworks, understanding proficiency issues, discussion on what makes a good IT staff and IT fundamentals. One major point made was that in order to be successful in this process each of need to know our end users needs. Competency Frameworks: The first thing that is needed is a list of competencies. Most of the time you need minimum levels that everyone will need to know and then a second tier or level that is based more on specialist’s or higher level competencies. Some lists are broken down by department or even job type and job level. Most competencies need to be task based so that it is easier to demonstrate and measure. When developing these competencies involve a range of staff so that all aspects are included. Consulting existing…

Enhancing the OPAC: Tagging the Catalog and Keyword-in-Heading Searching Shawn Carraway, Midlands Technical College Michael Bowden, Harrisburg Area Community College Michael Bowden and Shawn Carraway presented on two major customizations they made to their OPACs Both presenters work with SirsiDynix Unicorn but regardless of vendor any system should be able to, and want to impliment these ideas. Michael presented first on “Keyword in Heading” which he defines as a cross between a keyword search and browse authority search, and which allows the user to do a keyword search on the headings fields. The reason he set this up is because he feels students are not familiar with LCSH searching. The search page is located at: http://lib2.hacc.edu/web2/tramp2.exe/goto/guest?screen=home.html Michael pulls out heading from Sirsi into a separate MySQL database every night after the subject headings are compiled. The search interface then uses a keyword in browse field from which a php search…