emtacl day 3

Last day at emtacl and the morning after the conference dinner which had lovely food and somewhat unusual entertainment (music played with vegetables anyone?). Also nice to find out the brown cheese I tried the first morning (and didn't like) was like marmite - either love it or hate it!

Two keynotes this morning then I'll be trying to swap between strands...

Virtual research networks: Towards Research 2.0, Van den Brekel - Argh! lost my notes! That'll teach me not to save more often. Will try and go back later and fill in gaps...

Researchers using web 2.0 for collaboration, etc. - general tools and increasingly specialist web 2.0 tools.

Back on track now (just before the end!) - VREs (such as JISC VRE, MyExperiment, DARIAH, etc.). JISC leading the way (Hooray for JISC!). They help researchers from all disciplines to work collaboratively.

Key recommendations from JISC - "Scratch where it itches" - i.e. has to suit the researchers needs. More about community building than technology building. Need support from everyone. Key role for libraries. Preference for web 2.0 style of development. Needs to be driven by researchers. Benefits include faster research results and novel researh directions.

For libraries they act as a good way to feature library resources. Should be involved from the start.

Summary (key points for libraries). Need good communication with researchers. Play a key role in the sharing of information. Redefine the library services to match these needs. Brand and market the library.

Recommends supporting research students by Allan.

Engage, facilitate, stimulate - key message.

www.slideshare.net/digicmb - hopefully his slides will be up here (yes they are!) and I'll go back later to refresh my memory and fill in the gaps...

I've got Google, why do I need you? Aalen - A students perspective on academic libraries. Think we need an adjustable lectern.

Warning! She says she isn't a typical student. "I think of myself as a nerd" her obsession is reading about stuff online that should make her more effective, that she hasn't got time to use as she's spending all her time reading about them...

"I'm a paperless student" - for about a year! Studying is a whole lot more than reading.

Annoyed by all the tedious tasks you have to do as a student. When are the exams, what modules am I doing, Can I look at previous resources for courses to allow me to decide what to do? Would like the library to catalogue and make accessible these sort of resources.

Annoyed by copyright.

Annoyed by books (does the library have a book, does the bookshop have it, do 2nd hand bookshops have it, do her friends have a copy, etc?) - why can't we make it easier for her to find these things out.

Talking about notes. Printed stuff quite efficient for organising this stuff - think she's probably talking about a personalised learning environment for help with doing this electronically, linking between notes and other resources.

Hard to do this online, but many distractions with studying online as well.

Why did she go digital? Fast typist! Able to type while she reads. Showing Evernote - likes how this works (I like that I can use this on my iPhone & PC!). Also uses Google Docs. Running http://www.rescuetime.com/ on her computer - tells her what she's spending her time on, can block applications to allow you to focus. Love the idea of this!

Do these tools make her a better student? She seems very organised with her notes! She makes good notes from resources into her notes that she then refers to (I think this is a move back to how students used to work, but tend not to nowadays - really interesting!).

She uses http://quizlet.com/ to generate flashcards to test herself (really quick & easy).

Showed example of collaborative work for assignment - handed in a week early and got an A (really worked well for them). Needed to agree groundrules beforehand.

Is sorry she still has to deal with books at all - likes to take info from the book and then discard the book. Sounds like eBooks would work better for her (as long as she can cut & paste).

Does this make her a better student? Not sure. Thinks she knows a lot less than the previous generation, but has broad, shallow knowledge and is confident about searching for it again.

Finds Uni databases difficult. Gave up and went to Google Scholar instead.

Thinks the way she works is a hack, the internet, computer stone age... are we cavemen to the digital natives? Doesn't agree with digital native idea (hear, hear!) - "screentime does not make you competent!". The internet is not a place - "just because I can use a wooden spoon, doesn't mean I can use all utensils made out of wood". (ace!)

Nice quote from About face 3.o, page 42 about dropping out if you don't move quickly from being a beginner.

It's easy to forget what you don't practice. No use showing her a complicated interface to our resources in year 1 that she doesn't then use for a while. She want easy interface, that she doesn;t need to learn.

Shows video of 2 year old and a cat using an iPad - easy interface.

"The librarians logic is just as alien to me as the programmers"

"Should I adapt or you?

Really good, perceptive talk - slides available online.

How do new technologies challenge the users behaviour, Lauridsen - (From Serials Solutions. We've just bought their discovery tool summon, so will be interesting to me!) Following on from Primo demo (competitor!). Nice graph - amount spent on materials rising(ARL libraries). Perceived value of libray falling (Carol Tenopir).

People going to Google, not library. Lots of reasons why, list from http://projectinfolit.org/ Interesting that students will try the library first (but will then give up & go elsewhere).

Have tried to compete with Google in libraries ... single search across all collections. Federated search ("works to a certain extent", more +ve than I'd be!); discovery layers (over top of catalogue - lots of playing around with this, quite limited material so CAN play), now web-scale discovery (pre-harvested metadata, like Summon. Local versions of pre-harvested metadata have worked out too expensive / time consuming, hence move to web-scale).

Making the information world flat - everything equal in value, print not preffered, no "silos".

Showing stats from uni showing drop in use of abstracting & indexing materials, massive increase in "click through" to full text.

A few warning words -keep it simple, easy & fast. Resist the urge to display the complexities. Align our priorities / behaviours with reality. Stop doing lots of stuff that isn't appreciated.

What happens next? Life after 2.0 training in academic libraries, Buset & Lokse -

Just made it into here as they started! Very tight swapping rooms...

23 things course at one library (in 12 weeks) People seemed to enjoy the course, "discovered these things weren't dangerous" (great - people need to feel they won't "break" a tool if they play with it!). Some changes in behaviour - a library facebook page, 5 blogs, WIKI to complent intranet, some people using RSS feeds.

Other library being discussed covered much less, 20 week course, focussing on small range of technologies, problem based learning. Focus was on the process, not on individual products. Results - good feedback, seems to be limited change in behaviour perhaps?

Follow up survey - showed usual suspects in what web 2.0 tools used, Blogs, Wikis, etc. Why don;t people use Web 2.0 at work - 44.4% said "Not relevant to my job" (! But most of these didn;t receive any training, so awareness of how usual these tools can be is an issue) next along was "I don;t have time", 33.3%.

What has been the most important effect of learning about web 2.0 - new ways of working (most), no-one said "improved contact with library users". Yet most people (44%) said the most important advantage for libraries was improved info for users.

Attitudes - some fairly -ve comments. "email is good enough for me at work"; "I define web 2.0 as more of a leisure activity" (suggests perhaps that problem is educating people about why different tools might be useful / relevant rather than how to use the tools? Changing attitudes not learning mechanics of a new tool?)

Though quotes also recognise that web 2.0 tools are important to users and relevant to libraries. Perhaps individuduals not seeing it as relevant to them though? Happy that other people doing it though...

Conference end Ole Husby - Summing up conference. The cloud is important (his presentation running from the cloud, also cloud of dust from Iceland has worried them in the week before!). Waves (from Chris Clarke's talk) are disruptive... People will use our data in ways we couldn't think of (if it's available). Important to do things from the bottom up... Twitter has been very active in conference (showing the twub). "Because I have twitter, I don't need to keep notes".

Has thanked everyone. The end!