One of Computers in Libraries’ most popular sessions returns to turbocharge your web research. Our celebrated super searcher — and host of Searchers Academy — provides an updated-to-the-minute and jam-packed with valuable tips talk about searching the web more effectively. You don’t need to be an expert to use these techniques, but even long-time researchers will learn from them.

This session looks at search engines that represent developing trends in search technology. Some problems with traditional search engines, which utilize literal or concept searching, include retrieving irrelevant results or missing relevant results. These problems may be solved by penetrating the “deep web,” much of which exists in databases requiring a query submitted by a human, or retrieving the most current web information. Our first two speakers look at and discuss search engines that attempt to solve the problems of retrieving relevant results, penetrating the deep Web, information currency, and search interfaces. They discuss representative trends — semantic search, visualization, federated search, human-powered and real-time search. Citro discusses alternate search engines using information visualization to display search results.

Keeping up with all the changes in our industry and staying one step ahead of our clients require solid strategies to deal with this challenge. Our popular expert shares his ideas, learnings, top tips, and techniques from the search and search engine world to ensure that you stay in step with the fast-changing online information world.

Federated search has been around for a while. This session focuses on what’s new and innovative in the federated search landscape and takes a stab at what the future holds. Hear about the latest in the dynamic federated search marketplace and what steps you need to take for your environment. Features Federated Search Blog Contest Winner (sponsored by Deep Web Technologies).

A one-stop portal is the ideal way to facilitate information discovery and decision-making, but no one tool suffices. The next generation of information access — beyond federated searching — is discovery. Illustrating with a case study, this session looks at the challenges and solutions of implementation of a discovery tool, customer feedback and improvements, and maintenance, as well as lessons learned and next steps.

Have customers said your website is confusing? Does your website desperately need an experience design makeover? This session guides you  through a real-life library website extreme makeover, focusing on experience design elements used. It provides five ways to jump-start your own experience design makeovers and leaves you with solid ideas to use on your own website!

Davidson discusses neat, free mapping tools from Google and Bing: Google Earth to create narrations and movies of 3-D map views of any street or city on the globe; Google Fusion to quickly map data in table form; Bing Maps, with a free geocoding function so you can easily map lists of addresses and collaborate with groups of people; Bing Photosynth to create 3-D photo images and embed them into maps. He illustrates how students and faculty use these tools, and highlights the library’s use of the tools on its website. The second presentation discusses how recent software developments released by Microsoft Labs have opened up opportunities for libraries to present their collections and displays in a whole new way. Microsoft Deepzoom and Photosynth are free, easy-to-use tools that can be used to display large collections of images, to zoom in and out seamlessly to any page of an entire scanned book, display a 3-D rendering of your programs to the public with ease, or offer a quick and flashy online version of your library displays or artwork that is fun to use. See creative ways to use it in libraries.

Library website redesigns rarely go the way we want them to. They take more time, money, and effort than we would like. This session features two case studies from experienced practitioners highlighting lessons learned and useful tips. Houghton-Jan focuses on successful best practices, quick and cheap ways to handle project planning, project management, staff and customer involvement, communication, usability, and new website launch techniques as well as coping techniques for dealing with setbacks and keeping staff energy and excitement up throughout the process. The second case study discusses redesigning a website from the ground up, completely revising the site and rethinking the process to incorporate user-centered design as well as highlight library resources. It talks about utilizing Web 2.0 and open-source materials such as LibData for subject guides, a wiki for project organization, transparency and communication, and Drupal for content management.

Thanks to powerful new web tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and YouTube, we have been able to build community and promote resources and services in revolutionary ways. And while we know that our institutions have become more relevant and effective using them, how do we prove it to administrators, coworkers, and community members? How do we find the data to demonstrate the value of these highly practical and innovative tools? And then how do we translate those numbers for the people that fund our programs? Speakers share their methodologies, results, challenges, and stories in working to demonstrate the value of these emerging technologies in marketing and creating community. Audience participation and contribution is highly encouraged, so bring your methods, stories, and challenges too!

Jasek offers best practices on how libraries can organize all of the features that their websites offer. He shares a five-step process that explains how to get from understanding users and the main tasks they come to accomplish to making the right choices on links or features to present. He recommends broad categories for organization of tasks/content to help web browsers find exactly what they need by improving the overall organization of features offered. Shem-Tov presents a case study of how a team of special librarians collaborates to provide services through a taxonomy- and search-driven research portal, physical and online libraries, information skills training programs, and a variety of social media tools. Find out how they continue to push the limits of what they can do by incorporating new technologies and tactics to better serve their customers and raise awareness of their offerings and of better information skills in general, and how they tie in the different elements through coordinated campaigns.

Come and hear seasoned technology managers talk about library-tested “Black Ops Ninja-style” ways to ensure that your technology project gets full consideration and approval. Library users want technology and library staff members want to implement technology. But we all know that sometimes there are barriers to efficient technology project implementation that can frustrate and dishearten staff. No matter what aspect of library technology you work in, this session will help you get your projects done faster and done right. Make sure that your projects never again get bogged down in procedure and committee. Viva la resistance!

There has been a lot of buzz about Web 2.0 over the past few years, and many libraries have devoted significant staff time toward implementing 2.0 technologies. One look at the number of abandoned library blogs, wikis and MySpace profiles tells us that successful implementation of Web 2.0 technologies requires more than simply installing software. Most libraries are not currently structured to successfully embrace Web 2.0, which requires rapid user-centered change, experimentation, and radical trust. Farkas discusses why so many 2.0 initiatives fail and what organizations need to do to position themselves to take advantage of the 2.0 technologies in ways that will ensure successful implementation. She includes practical tips, illustrated with examples from libraries that are already on the road to 2.0 through their innovative practices and services.

This session looks at examples of how the digital age is affecting strategic decision making and risk management in libraries. Mast examines some helpful and not-so-helpful developments for librarians using information to make decisions about collecting, cataloging, and facilitating access to collections of information and discusses the merits of popular techniques and tools for improving decision making and decisions. Using an RFID project as a case study, Canty presents EPL’s formalized decision-making model, which brings multiple factors together to help determine optimal conditions and locations for automated sorter installation.

Generation X librarians bridge the varied, and often conflicting, attitudes, ideals, and expectations of the multi-generational library. Leading fearlessly from the middle, Gen X librarians are paving the way for the modern library to emerge, by championing innovation, mediating change, and translating cultural norms between generations within the workplace. Librarians from two universities identify best practices of Gen X library leaders, describe the unique skills and strengths of Gen X librarians, and offer their predictions on the professional legacy of this influential generation.

Have you seen jobs listed lately? Digital initiatives librarian. Digital branch manager. Digital strategies manager. Ever wondered what these people do at a library and why they’re needed? This session introduces you to a digital strategies manager’s job and a digital branch. Panelists discuss their unique roles in their libraries, what their day-to-day jobs look like, and the unique challenges they encounter along the way. And more importantly, they provide tips on how you can use this new role in your library and in your current job.

Librarians can build online communities around their digital collections in the same way they build physical communities around their physical collections: by providing resources that interest their patrons, by making their patrons feel comfortable using those resources, and by providing their patrons with a sense of ownership of those resources. Hear how one library used the tools provided by new technologies to build a community of users around DigitalCommons@ILR, a premier institutional and disciplinary repository. They share their strategies, practices, experiences and lessons learned, and illustrate how their success keeps them coming back.

This session looks at the landscape of web tools that enable people to come together with audio, video, documents and surveys, calendaring, and wikibased sites. It includes such tools as Google Apps (e.g., calendaring, docs, videos, sites, and templates), Google Groups, Skype, and more. Learn how you can enrich your communication and interaction with exciting, inexpensive or free, tools.

A very different set of skills are needed to run an organization, and those skills do not often come packaged along with technical knowledge and experience. But administrators need to know some specific things about technology in order to do their jobs well. Hear about the top 10 things administrators need to know and see if you agree!

This session is for those who are piloting or want to pilot Google’s Wave, or those who want to hear what the library community is doing with the Wave. Join this facilitated discussion of current practices and applications. Share your learnings, challenges and successes. If you haven’t played with this new real time collaboration tool, check it out at http://wave.google. com/help/wave/about.html.

Join this interactive discussion of Twitter tools — from managing Twitter feeds to searching them to capturing and analyzing them. Hear how libraries and information professionals have successfully applied these tools in different environments.

Information fluency is the intersection of information literacy, computer literacy and critical thinking and is a “must” for participants of the 21st century. Mairn explores a variety of resources, research tools, and tips that can be integrated into course management systems and/or traditional classroom settings to help build fluency and develop critical thinking. These tools range from using real-time web/mobile services like Twitter to using conventional econtent more creatively and other tools/services to construct a learning environment — online or face-to-face — that is conducive to information discovery, sharing, and lifelong learning.

People need to be literate to be involved in and contribute to society. Times are changing, technologies are evolving rapidly, and it’s no longer enough to focus on the ability to read and write alone. Libraries need to shift their focus to transliteracy, the ability to read, write, and interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media, from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio, and film, to digital social networks. Come learn how transliteracy is tied to literacy and why it is important to libraries.

This session begins by examining how CRS learned about GIS, designed a new function and roles to the library, and designed training to promote fluency in spatial thinking for public policy analysis. The speakers reveal lessons learned from this successful implementation, both from the perspective of the library and from the perspective of the GIS specialist, including using task-based training to show immediate value to end users, leveraging early successes to improve credibility, and techniques for sustaining attention to a complicated new topic. Dubicki explains how a study of Monmouth’s business students showed that the majority begin their research with internet sources rather than subscription e-resources with authoritative  information. She discusses strategies for improving the students’ information literacy and how the library assists students in developing skills in evaluating websites and the library’s databases, and making information fluency a more relevant and lifelong skill.

The effects of an information-illiterate population can be felt throughout an economy, and within individual enterprises, through the loss of productivity by workers searching for information, not to mention the loss of opportunity to the firm if vital pieces of information are overlooked entirely. Keiser measures indicators of economic vibrancy in relation to indicators of information literacy and suggests ways in which governments, academic institutions, industry associations, database producers, vendors, aggregators, websites, and libraries contribute to the economic prosperity of nations, industries, companies, and individuals through information literacy programs. Badman and Flinchum identify the changing information needs, along with the literacies needed to fill those needs, over the course of a patron’s lifespan in the context of the institutions suited to meet these needs. They discuss the points in which public, academic, and school libraries can work together to make transitions between institutions easier and reduce the obstacles to information literacy that may exist at any point in time.

LibGuides, a Web 2.0 content management and information sharing system, is designed specifically for libraries to incorporate multimedia and Web 2.0 elements in subject research guides, course projects, and an increasing number of nontraditional collaborative projects. Schrecker outlines the many facets of a new doctoral research guide, faculty orientation session, and collaborative faculty technology presentation using LibGuides to create fluent information portals. DeVoe and Badman discuss a study with approximately 20 sections of a research-based public speaking course where students from half of the sections were exposed to a course-specific LibGuide embedded within Blackboard while the students from the other half were not. They share the findings from students’ annotated bibliographies and questionnaire feedback to determine if access to LibGuides encourages students to utilize higher-quality information resources and, subsequently, impacts student academic success.