Sessions for the staff of the MIT Libraries
All sessions will take place in DIRC.
This series of training sessions is offered for helping staff:
- keep up with the latest technologies
- learn about ways to find out about user needs
- get some hands-on experience with technologies that can be used to help solve user needs
- generate creative thinking about how to match technologies with user needs to create new beta services
1) Thurs. Oct. 30, 10:30 - 11:30 am
Understanding our users - an overview, with a focus on ethnographic studies
Class page
Nicole Hennig
Traditional usability testing is not the only tool for learning about users. Ethnographic methods are also very useful, especially for deciding which new services to offer.
We'll cover:
- overview of methods:
traditional usability tests
card sorting tests
surveys
ethnographic studies
- tips on when each technique is most appropriate
- some details about our Photo Diary study in 2006 of MIT undergrads and
grad students
- ideas & discussion
2) Mon. Nov. 17, 10:30 - 11:30
How to create a custom search engine using Google Custom Search
class page
Nicole Hennig + Darcy Duke
- learn to create a search engine that searches a set of web sites of
your own choosing
http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
- ideas for custom search engines we could create (especially for
subject-specific open web sites)
3) Mon. Feb. 2, 3-4pm
Create a mashup using RSS feeds
class page
Nicole Hennig + Remlee Green
some sources of feeds:
- Worldcat custom lists
- LibraryThing
- Del.icio.us
- CiteULike or Connotea
- MIT TechTV
- MITWorld
- search results from Web of Science
- Barton new book feeds
- tools for merging feeds
- Yahoo Pipes
- FeedDigest (or others)
- tools for displaying feeds
- LibGuides RSS box
- ideas for mashups we could create
4) Tues. March 3, 2 pm - 3 pm
Fantastic & beautiful visual displays for libraries
class page
Nicole Hennig + Allison Benedetti
- a tour of different visual browsing interfaces:
- Cooliris
- Dipity
- Flickr embed tools
- Flickriver
- PhotoZoom (Silverlight Deep Zoom, Seadragon)
- Photosynth
- hands-on: how to use the embed tools to insert these into your site
- ideas for what we could do
5) Mon. May 4, 3 - 4 pm
Twitter, Microblogging & Libraries
class page
Nicole Hennig + Remlee Green
- what other libraries are doing
- innovative uses of Twitter by non-library organizations
- how to set up your Twitter account
- ideas for how we could use Twitter
- appropriate for public services staff thinking of innovative services
6) Tues. June 23, 3:30 - 4:30 pm
Kindle & ebook devices
Nicole Hennig + Theresa Tobin
- a tour of the Kindle's features and capabilities
- other ebook devices: past, present & future
- MIT's Humanities Library - experience with loaning Kindles to our users
- what are libraries doing, what might we do in the future?
- thoughts on the future of ebook devices and what it could mean for libraries
7) Tues. July 21, 3 - 4 pm
Mobile phones, iPhones, & library services
Nicole Hennig + Remlee Green
- examples of what other libraries are doing
- MIT's mobile web site
- ideas for what we could do
