ER&L 2014 workshop: Influencing and improving products: structured interface reviews

Written By ranti 2014-02-03T04:36:00Z

I will collaborate with several fine fellow librarians from Cornell and Columbia University libraries doing a workshop titled “Influencing and improving products: structured interface reviews” at the upcoming Electronic Resources & Libraries conference, March 16-19, 2014 at AT&T Conference Center, Austin, Texas. The workshop will be held on March 19th, 1-5pm CST.

This workshop will analyse library electronic resource platform from usability and accessibility perspectives. Most of our assessment tend to be from either usability or accessibility perspective. Rarely we perform both type of assessments together when evaluating a library electronic resource. Hopefully this workshop would provide some basic understanding on how to conduct the assessments, document the findings, and communicate them with the vendor/provider.

    On diversifying our conference experience

    Written By ranti 2014-01-19T05:01:00Z

    e.g. starts expanding your territory. ;-)

    John Dupuis (Confessions of a Science Librarian) posted “From the Archives: My theory of conferences” in January 2010 and “A stealth librarianship manifesto” in February 2011.

    Good readings.

    I’m in agreement with his “theory of conference” post. I’m a systems librarian for electronic resources, so my focus is about technology as well as access to library resources (be that resources we bought or subscribe to, or the ones we produced in house, digital collections and stuff). I’m also doing library web presence assessments, so usability study, accessibility evaluations, and usage statistics also fall under my work area. In additional to that, I’m the subject librarian for Library & Information Science and the library liaison for the Museum Studies program.

    So, when I had to choose conferences I need to (or want to or, many times, wished to) go to, there are tons of choices. My suggestion for those who can only afford go to the same conference(s), try to go to at least one session with topic that really has nothing to do with your area of work. It’s amazing to learn something new from those sessions and the topic might actually end up relevant to your area of work. Even if it was not relevant to your work, you’ll learn something new anyway that might inspire some type of collaboration.

    Should you choose to go to a non-library conference, you’ll meet with amazing people who also care a lot about their profession and the discipline. You’ll either expanding your network or at least learn more about issues and trends in those area. Also a chance to promote your amazing library skills. :-) You don’t have to go to those non-library conferences all the time, of course, but at least you’ll understand how other people in different disciplines would interact, talk about issues and trends, and start a conversation with them. I have had luck going to museum related conferences (state [1] and national [2] [3] [4] level) and THATCamp events due to my liaison responsibilities.

    For those who are curious which library-related conferences I usually go to:

    I also attended Michigan Library Association, LITA Forum (ALA), and Computers in Libraries (Information Today, Inc.) conferences. I went to ACM SIGCHI conference once; it was awesome. Then there are C2E2 and Penguicon, which have had several programs related to libraries. Last but not the least, MSU Comics Forum.

    [1] Michigan Museum Association[2] American Alliance of Museums[3] Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC)[4] Museums and the Web

      linux man pages

      Written By ranti 2014-01-19T05:00:05Z

      I need a linux man page system that show me what command(s) to use if I want to achieve something. Current man pages are not really helpful: you have to know the name of the command before you can even figure out what that command would do for you.

      Anyway, I’m listing these as my bookmarks: