Newman Library Idea Lab

Attendees: Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Randy Hensley, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Jin Ma, Ryan Phillips, Erica Sauer, Mike Waldman

iPad
We started off discussing the iPad release and some of the criticism of the device as being too locked down, filled with DRM restrictions, and further the use of apps, which some view as a problematic development that signals an effort to return to walled gardens of the web of the early 1990s. The device seems geared more toward consumption of content as opposed to a tool for creation. It was suggested the iPad may appeal to baby boomers looking for a simple computer. We also discussed how it may transform the world of periodicals.

New Paywalls on the Web
The discussion of the iPad led us to a discussion of the creation of new paywalls on the web. We referred to:

• Newsday only getting 35 paid subscribers three months after it moved all content behind a paywall
• The New York Times announcing it would put up a paywall again
• Magazine publishers looking to database vendors for exclusive content deals (as in the recent case with EBSCO)

RDA Updates
This page on the CUNY Technical Services Wiki offered some updates about RDA from the ALA Midwinter meeting, including news about ALA’s announcement of pricing for the RDA Toolkit. More news about the testing and release of RDA can be found on the Library of Congress Bibliographic Control Working Group site.

Records in CUNY+ for CDs in Naxos
Baruch will be loading records into CUNY for the CDs that have available in streaming format via the Naxos database. Those catalog records will include direct URLs to albums in Naxos. Track-level records, though, will be not part of those catalog records. We were also reminded that the reference wiki includes instructions about how a professor can create a playlist in Naxos that can be shared with students.

New design for CUNY Website
We looked at the new CUNY website, which is still in preview mode right now. The CUNY Portal and other CUNY systems on the web will likely be redesigned in the image of the soon-to-be-launched main CUNY site.

CUNYfirst
We got an update on where we are in the rollout of systems in CUNYfirst, which brings together silos of data relating to finance, HR (now referred to as HCM for “human capital management), and student information.

LibGuides
We looked at a LibGuide set up for a LIB 1015 class and commented on the draft of a guide for MLA style. We also looked at the main LibGuides page for the whole system to see which ones in the system were most popular.

A recent post on the Bits blog by Nick Bilton on the New York Times website identifies a useful phrase to describe the growing phenomenon of people sharing links via Twitter, Facebook, etc.: controlled serendipity.

Bilton, Nick. “‘Controlled Serendipity’ Liberates the Web.” Bits. The New York Times. 22 January 2010. Web.

Maura Smale, a librarian at the New York City College of Technology, and Mariana Regalado, a librarian at Brooklyn College, are currently engaged in an interesting project to use ethnographic research methods to document the study habits of undergraduate students at their schools. Read more about the project on the site wiki for it.

Smale, Maura, and Mariana Regalado. Undergraduate Scholarly Habits Ethnographic Project. N.d. Web. 21 January 2009.

ResourceShelf passed along this item from OCLC noting that an iPhone app used to do price comparisons for books (the user takes a picture of the barcode with the iPhone and gets Google price search results back) can also include WorldCat holdings info, too.

An interesting presentation and conversation thread was started on FriendFeed today by Mita Williams about the analysis she and her colleagues have done of the traffic on their library’s website.

I am interested in collecting information about library web sites that we consider exemplary for their design and functionality. Please comment on this posting with URLs to sites that have an outstanding overall design or pages that you think handle a function well.

I would like to incorporate general principles for the library web site redesign into the project charter. Please comment on this post with any principles that you would like to recommend. For example, “Every member of the library staff should potentially be able to edit content.” Such a principle would have implications for the content management system we adopt as well as the work flow for the management of the site.

The libraries at the University of Michigan just released a report about usability issues with LibGuides that is worth taking a look at.

The Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary has put together a nice collection of web pages designed to help students get started with research. I like the way that many of the pages are designed for browsing and are frequently free of large blocks of text.

At the Berkman Center for Internet and Society this fall, David Weinberger gave an interesting presentation titled “What Information Was” in which he sketched out some ideas that might be useful for students in our credit courses. You can watch the video, taped at the center’s “Berkman Luncheon Series,” here.

Weinberg, David. “What Information Was.” 6 October 2009. Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Web.