This Workshop is now closed. Please contact the Conference Registrar for more information:

143 Old Marlton Pike • Medford, NJ 08055
609-654-6266 • Fax: 609-654-4309
conferences@infotoday.com

In the past few years, the “data deluge” has become a topic of concern for federal agencies, grant funders, scholars, and librarians. What is going to happen to all the data that is being generated by researchers? And what should be the role of librarians in this evolving area of scholarly communication? One approach to address these issues led to the development of the Data Curation Profile, a tool for information professionals to gather information about a specific set of research data that may be published, shared, or archived for reuse and dissemination. Researchers at Purdue University Libraries and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at University of Illinois, with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, developed this tool as a means of investigating, uncovering, and capturing the data needs of researchers. Through hands-on activities, this full-day workshop covers how the Data Curation Profile was designed, provides a template and approaches for using it to interact with researchers, illustrates the types of information it gathers, and various scenarios for which the profiles can be useful. Register early for this free workshop as attendance is limited to 40. Lunch is not included.

Making the case for funding library programs and services involves more than just saying something is good or useful. Today, librarians need to be able to prove that programs and services have a positive impact. In this workshop, you will learn how to gather data that will be meaningful to library funders as well as effective techniques for presenting that data. By the end of this hands-on and practical workshop, you will understand how to use basic statistical methods to analyze data, have experience using the tools that can most effectively present that data, and be prepared to make an effective case for funding of library programs and services.

SharePoint, Microsoft’s ubiquitous end-user development platform, not only impacts the library’s tools but also its relationship with IT and how its clients interact with information. This workshop gives you an overview of SharePoint’s key features with an emphasis on search, navigation, and metadata. You’ll see why planning is crucial to SharePoint success, look at the pros and cons of technology-based governance, and learn about metrics that go beyond server log analysis. Finally, you’ll learn how librarians can use SharePoint in their everyday work as well as contribute their skills and experience to increase employee productivity in a SharePoint environment.

This interactive workshop introduces Google Analytics, a powerful, easyto-use, and free website usage measurement tool. Participants learn how to set up, collect, monitor, and intelligently analyze their website usage data to better understand their users and their sites. Users will leave the session ready to implement Google Analytics on their library site and make use of its powerful visualizations to make informed decisions about their site structure and content.

We all want our audiences to walk away enlightened and inspired by our presentations, but that isn’t always so easy. Or is it? This workshop discusses and demonstrates a wide variety of very practical tips and tricks you can use to more effectively connect with audiences and help them engage with you and the information you present. It covers everything from how to increase the efficacy of your slides, images, multimedia and design down to concerns people have about how they look and sound when speaking to a group. Seasoned speakers and folks just starting out are all encouraged to attend and join in this practical, interesting, and engaging workshop. Veteran presenters (and audience members) provide tips and tools for making your presentation successful.

Does your library jump on the latest technology bandwagon but have no idea on how to maintain the new projects after the glow of the newest innovation starts to fade? Many library programs die a slow death due to either lack of long term planning or another more shiner, flashier exciting innovation promises a better faster way of doing things. Keeping up with ever changing technology advancements not only adds to inconsistencies and potential confusion for the current customers, but can be costly in terms of purchasing software and hardware, technology training and staff hours. For most libraries, the thought of strategic planning involves endless meetings and pages of flipchart notes that are rarely referred to or implemented. This workshop shares tips, a template, and practical techniques to start and maintain long term programs, those that can be implemented whether you need to develop a technology or digital project plan or just upgrade an existing service.

Social network software is all the rage but how can we use our social networks for practical purposes? In this workshop, you will learn about the science of social networks: what social network analysis (SNA) is, what tools can be used to perform an analysis of a social network, what some practical uses of SNA in libraries are, and how SNA can be used to understand your environment. At the end of this workshop, you’ll be able to use some common social network analysis methods to advocate for various library positions.

A nuts-and-bolts session for people with some SharePoint familiarity, this workshop illustrates how to configure SharePoint search functions for people and content, create custom search pages, import a hierarchy of terms, and use the Term Store Management Tool. You’ll learn the pros and cons of various content deployment options and how to create document templates with custom metadata elements. Participants look at three strategies for integrating SharePoint with an external metadata repository and how to build a custom web part to display thesaurus relationships on the search results page. This practical workshop, by a librarian and SharePoint expert, provides an action plan for moving ahead with taxonomy and search functions using SharePoint.

Join our marketing maven and website guru as they team up to cover a mixture of marketing techniques and technical tactics that will help your website rank higher in search results lists. The best way to keep your pages and services in front of patrons is to make individual elements of your site easy for patrons to share. Metadata and keywords still matter for basic SEO (search engine optimization), but the wave of the future is the Open Graph protocol, which makes each element of your site easier to find and to share. It can help your organization piggyback its marketing efforts on searchers’ own normal inclination to share their online “finds” with their friends. This fun team provides lots of tips, practical techniques, and more for engaging your community through a successful and inviting website.

Make brainstorming, requirements gathering, problem solving, and group communication easier through facilitation. This interactive workshop teaches techniques and exercises to increase the effectiveness of meetings, boost creativity, stimulate problem solving, and encourage collaboration. Taught by two information professionals with formal facilitation training and experience, this workshop provides theory, hands-on practice time, and feedback. Learn techniques to help groups begin working together, exercises for brainstorming and problem solving, pointers for conducting focus groups, and tips to make your meetings run smoothly. This participatory workshop gives attendees the opportunity to try their hand at facilitation in a supportive environment, shares a toolkit of facilitation skills, and creates the confidence to use them. These skills can then be used to understand stakeholder needs and connect with clients, spread information and ideas, create strategic value and align services with strategic priorities, and make tough choices.

Our lives are digital. Everything from family photographs, music files, video footage, and correspondence to medical records, bookmarks, documents, and even ideas are now available in electronic form. This makes access quick and convenient, but how do we save all of these digital assets for the long term? Most of us have experienced personal data loss at one time or another due to hard drive failure, file corruption, technology obsolescence, or accidental file deletion. What should we be doing right now to safeguard our digital creations? This hands-on session looks at the process of creating and executing an action plan for archiving personal digital assets, deciding what to store, consolidating multiple file versions, and cataloging resources. It explores both local storage media and cloud services as well as institutional and disciplinary repositories. Learn to plan and execute the archiving of your own personal digital assets as well as how to teach your patrons to do this for themselves. Leave with your own personal strategic plan for your personal digital archive, knowledge of how to write personal policies for digital archives, an understanding of the best way to implement and maintain personal digital archives, and how to customize a catalog of digital assets.

Even with all the podcasts, videos, and Flash tutorials in the world, great library websites need great written content, and writing for the web provides unique opportunities and challenges. Learn to tailor your material to the medium by finding out what usability studies reveal about how people actually read online. This interactive workshop is a must for library website content contributors and webmasters who want to improve their sites and online writing style. It covers what research findings show about formatting content, writing style, typography, and layout for the web. Practice critiquing and revising sample library webpages, and get new insights.