Our distinguished thought leader, author, and practitioner looks at how the forces of change, and emerging waves of interest associated with these forces, inspire and invite us to imagine a future of learning that is as powerful as it is optimistic. By exploring play, innovation, and the cultivation of the imagination as cornerstones of learning, Brown shares his vision of learning for the future that is achievable, scalable, and one that grows along with the technology that fosters it and the people who engage with it. A new form of culture in which knowledge is seen as fluid and evolving is one in which Internet Librarians can excel and support learning with content, connections and conversations.

O’Dell, a veteran tech journalist, shares her view of the next major trends in mobile technology and explores emerging location-sharing and image-sharing technologies. This is a not-to-be missed session.

Engage, entertain, and enrich your community with local history photographs and snippets of information by developing mobile tours that connect places and things to collections. This panel shares their QR code secrets for promoting, browsing, and connecting; mobilizing stacks; and more.

This session focuses on collections and services, the areas of influence for libraries. Hear about two major technologies that are disrupting collections and services for libraries. Interactive ebooks (books? games? apps?) are going to be the next major wave in mobile content. Near field communication (NFC) will revolutionize how we connect and transfer information.

This session looks at the mobile landscape, highlights some cool tools for the mobile world, looks at some research about what’s happening and will happen in the future. It is filled with insights and ideas for how you can plan and implement mobile strategies and practices for your environment.

This session covers developing a presence for mobile websites, considerations for mobile usability, and designing programs for a presence on mobile devices as well as portals. Hear about an experiment using iPads at public libraries in Denmark. Learn about storyboarding and scenario prototyping for mastering mobile usability. And explore how designing a mobile website might be a bit simpler than you thought.

Hear how the University of Nevada–Reno library set up an Apple Store-inspired e-reader bar to help patrons explore various handheld devices. Maslyukova addresses the questions of how to manage expectations of clients and provide access to a growing number of mobile products in The World Bank.

This session is for those libraries struggling to provide innovative technology services with little resources to devote to staff, software, or hardware. The bright and shiny tech projects we see sometimes seem impossible to implement in smaller, poorer, and/or under-technology-staffed libraries. But we too can offer excellent online services to our users! Take advantage of the quick and free services that any library can add to its website with minimal time or expertise. This session highlights 20 easy steps libraries can take to improve their websites with ease. If your library hasn’t yet implemented the newest and greatest technologies on its website but wants to, join us for lots of tips and tricks.

Web metrics help us improve services by revealing users’ behaviors on the website. Ho shows how to use Google analytics to see the most popular webpages, how people arrive at a page, and where people go after viewing a page. This data can point out pages that are important to update, if the page is working as expected and ways to make sure people find your pages. Wisniewski shows how to segment website traffic to do some deep diving into understanding users’ behaviors. He discusses goals and how they aren’t just for businesses selling a product but can help libraries make better website processes.

UC Irvine Libraries recognize that a library’s website is the busiest service point. Learn how to apply time-tested customer service concepts to an online environment and assess their impact. Explore customer service options from easy to implement to bigger projects that involve more investment. Colegrove discusses the best way to serve users who have a heavy reliance on Google as their first choice for research. Learn from his pioneering work on what’s working and what isn’t as he shares results of trials utilizing different approaches to marketing library e-resources at the point of need. Find out what he discovered about printed bit.ly links, QR codes on library materials, and using targeted advertising on Google and Facebook. Take a peek at recent changes in Google AdWords API that may be of use to libraries.

Learn about the ups and downs of implementing hosted solutions in libraries, the benefits to staff and patrons, and what helps a project succeed. Starting off with a public library case study, find out why VPL turned to hosted and implemented Bibliocommons to add social media features to the catalogue, and rolled out LibGuides. Many academic libraries have adopted the LibGuides platform but how well is it working? The Miami U team decided to find out how usable LibGuides are. They looked at the placement of the guides in the website and organization schemes to discover what is intuitive, comprehensible, learnable, and useful. They report the findings of their comprehensive usability study and share a set of best practices for LibGuide design and layout based on their findings.

Which open source content management system (CMS) is right for you (or your library)? Learn all about what makes WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla the leaders in the open source CMS space. Speakers cover the present and future of Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla and expose the strengths and weaknesses of the systems. They help you decide which CMS is best for certain types of applications such as personal blogs, library websites, and other applications.

Epstein looks at ways librarians who partner with external stakeholders on campus can communicate the unique needs of the library website through conversations,  collaborations, and negotiations. Franklyn describes a library website redesign and shares insights into using Drupal as the content management system and the value of usability studies. The Marin County Free Library team discusses taking a website from mess to success in a challenging environment with comments on new leadership, limited time, diverse staff in 10 locations, library brand in flux, and a commitment to incorporating a full-scale social media integration. Our practitioners share tips on redesigns as well as lessons learned on how to work effectively with staff and the public.

One of our most popular sessions returns to share the latest secrets and strategies for web research. Our well-known super searcher and host of Searchers Academy provides an up-dated-to-the-minute and jam-packed-with-valuabletips-and-tools talk about searching the web more effectively. You don’t need to be an expert to use these tips and techniques, but even long-time researchers will learn something new.

Notess reports on current pros and cons of discovery engines and Breeding discusses the new generation of discovery products emerging to replace older-generation library catalogs. The genre of discovery products continues to advance, with ever more powerful capabilities. Many now include the ability to rapidly search not only the content of traditional library catalogs, but to also offer much deeper search  capabilities including the individual articles represented in a library’s subscriptions. These products continue to expand indexing and full-text coverage of both articles and books. Come hear the latest news about developments in search and content delivery products.

Is “readers’ advisory” just so last century? What are the models for reading recommendations that work? Are libraries different than retailers? How do you build reading communities? What are the best practices for building trust in your recommendations and reviews? What are the dynamics of the local market for public libraries and is there enough to differentiate local library service from the retail model? What tools and resources can be provided in context to readers? Can we add the author and illustrator dimension to reader choice? Hear from three experienced and creative suppliers about new techniques to crowdsource readers’ advisory services and their experience with new models for libraries.

New beta releases of interest to info pros and library users continuously become available from well-known providers as well as new technology providers. Since it can be very time-consuming to learn about new beta releases, determine how to use them, and evaluate them, Price discusses some of the latest beta releases and shares some of the tools and techniques he uses to locate these resources. This popular speaker never disappoints in highlighting insights and tools anyone can use!

In the age of Google and information overload, it’s no longer a matter of what or how much information you have — it’s what you do with it. The first presentation demonstrates how to use advanced features of Google to find quality results faster.  Phelps provides tips and techniques for creating products and services that make information useful to your clients, while increasing your value.

Internet Explorer (IE) beat out Mozilla to win the browser wars of yore, but now IE and Firefox are seeing increased competition from Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and new browsers for smartphones, tablets, and e-readers. Meanwhile, IE and Firefox have launched new versions with significant  changes.  Come explore these web browser changes, unique features, search options, privacy issues, and more. Learn the impact for both users and web designers.

Library culture is training-focused. We talk about teaching our patrons to fish rather than handing them a fillet, but when it comes to our own learning, we want the seafood platter set in front of us. Library “trainers” Newman, Farrington, and Sheehan discuss the need for cultural change in libraries while sharing their own successes and not-so successes.  Clasper describes the training program designed to keep the county libraries’ staff current with the technology they use every day. The program incorporated workshops, webinars, multimedia, games, and a web-based online learning center, where staff engaged their colleagues in a professional development community.

Supporting communities that are vastly different in terms of geography, culture, interest, and practice requires that libraries truly learn about these communities. Calgary Public Library is supporting librarians to self-identify their personal learning requirements, develop individual learning plans, and ultimately enhance the organizational ability to be highly visible and active participants in the work of our communities.

Digital literacy, media literacy, information literacy, 21st-century literacy, and other new literacies are all included in transliteracy. Newman, Hollier and Hamilton cover the importance of transliteracy and libraries’ role in supporting patrons’ development of these skills. Koerber looks at BPL’s Learning for Life Online, a free, ongoing online learning community platform that helps users develop a framework for a lifetime of learning and exploration. Based on four powerful tools — a WordPress site, Twitter, Facebook and the library’s social discovery catalog — the program has been a learning experience for the library and patrons, and you’ll come away with a checklist to start online patron training programs at your library.

Miller shares IUPUI’s experience using iPads and mobile devices to teach undergrads, as well as preliminary findings of a study of student learning and perceptions of mobile resources for library instruction and access. Applications include Popplet, iBrainstorm, GoodReader, Dropbox, and others. The University of La Verne team gives a “how-to” presentation illustrating how regional campus administration collaborated with the university library to design and implement virtual delivery of library research instruction to 5,000 distance learners using Acrobat Adobe Connect and Business Skype.

New partnerships and collaboration on a campus migration to Blackboard Learn allowed UH Libraries to fully integrate library resources and successfully streamline and manage the content. This presentation discusses the conversations and partnerships between the library and campus instructional designers, lessons learned from being on the Blackboard implementation team, the technical aspects of how UH libraries streamlined the delivery of content, and the future implications for the library team that will manage the content.

Both of these libraries learned valuable lessons about using video for teaching and tutorials. Steinberg covers the types of tutorials turning heads; software (paid and free) used to create them; scripting and rehearsal techniques for smooth and easy listening; website, course management system (CMS), or LibGuide placement; and where to find tutorials already created and ready for you to use! Thornley describes a semester-long assignment revolving around video dissemination

The California Campaign for Strong School Libraries is a public awareness campaign that seeks to inform the public and policymakers on the importance of a strong school library in increasing student academic achievement. The campaign promotes the new Model School Library Standards and works to “change the story” of what a school is. California School Library Association’s Siminitus and Williams showcase a number of major outreach efforts including an audio journal; bus ads; Illustrators Galore @ LIBRARY STORE; leveraging library vendors as advocates; plus how to design and offer their free, online tutorial for teens, “Tools2Create: Summer 2.0 Fun.”

Ebook circulation at libraries and schools is taking off, having increased 200% in 2010. Discover from Brian Gurewitz, an ebook industry insider, how you can take advantage of this surge in popularity as he introduces the latest enhancements from OverDrive.

Do your students know the difference between a discussion list and a wiki? How should they regard a newspaper article that is also a blog entry? Getting students to think critically about the range of resources they encounter on the web can be tough! So bring your lesson ideas, because in this actively participatory session, Bergson-Michelson and Seroff take on the challenge to develop more effective and exciting lessons that help teach students to identify what they are accessing online.

Should your school consider implementing student eportfolios? How can you as a librarian be a part of the process? This session explores different avenues schools have taken to incorporate eportfolios into their curriculum. Geiger and Arriaga outline the essential elements of an eportfolio as well as hosting options such as Google sites. Join them as they share their experiences and lessons learned while implementing eportfolios.

Teaching library and research instruction—essential skills such as basic research, source evaluation, digital citizenship, avoiding plagiarism—is vitally important. Students need to learn and retain these skills now more than ever, but it seems the school schedule gets tighter and tighter. In this session, hear how Tong and Daniel have revamped their program to provide skills instruction at the point of need in the “location” best suited to the situation. Learn from their successes (and mistakes!) as they discovered what skills to teach face-to-face, or as interactive, online modules. They also discuss how the library staff has integrated with the 9th grade history  curriculum to provide specific, hands-on research instruction.

Learn from high school librarians Dettling and Gorman how to transform the student research paper into a project that utilizes absolutely no paper! With the use of a digital notebook, such as Evernote, teach students to take notes, gather research, and effectively organize their information in a paperless format, all accessible from any computer—a laptop at home, a desktop at school, or a mobile device such as an iPad, iPhone, Android, or BlackBerry. Then learn how to use Turnitin.com to not only collect electronic versions of student work, but also to assess and provide descriptive feedback at both the formative and summative stages. Lisa and Toni show how to use technology to get students enthusiastic about the research process and to support your school’s Green Initiatives.