Want to sharpen your web search skills? Find information in the real-time collaborative and social web? Learn from the experts? Join search veterans, speakers, and authors to learn the latest strategies and techniques for searching online. This fast-paced, newly updated, day-long event allows you to interact with the experts, who share their searching secrets and expertise as they focus on the most-current practices in the field of web research. There’s always something new to be learned from these leading-edge panelists. Participants should have basic experience with web searching, but even searchers with an extensive searching background will find tips to polish and advance their skills and will come away with new resources and tools. Academy topics include the following:

• Hidden Tools & Features of the Major Search Engines: Learn about the new and little-known search features of the Big Three.
• Desert Island Databases: What online resources would you consider essential if you were stranded on a desert island?
• Cost-Effective Searching: Online strategies/practices for tough times to get the most for your search dollar and your time.
• Searching the Social Web: Find out how to tap into the social web to glean intelligence.
• Searching the Mobile Web: Best apps and strategies.
• Subject Search Round-Up: Hear from experts on the specific tools and resources for searching in a variety of specialized topics

This full-day, intensive, hands-on workshop is for new and novice Drupal users. It covers Drupal 6 and 7 skills, including installation, configuration, core functions, and theme development. This introductory workshop touches on most every aspect of the core Drupal framework:

• How to install Drupal and all the modules that a common site would use
• Adding, editing, and moderating content
• Creating user accounts and understanding Drupal’s permissions system
• Setting up menus and other design elements on a page
• Creating human-readable URLs
• Categorizing content using Drupal’s taxonomy system
• Editing your own Drupal theme 
• Bring your laptop, and at the end of this Drupal day, you’ll have a simple but complete Drupal site.

Interested in improving your library website and reframing your digital presence from the point of view of the user? This lively, high-level and interactive workshop shares practical ways to assess, design, and improve your online properties for maximum user friendliness. Immerse yourself in this in-depth workshop led by experts and practitioners that incorporates an overview of usability tools and techniques, a look at the latest research on designing for a positive user experience, tons of tips and tricks to help you avoid common usability and UX pitfalls, and discusses other useful measurement and assessment tools to help you better understand your users.

This interactive and hands-on workshop provides a complete overview of mobile technologies, discusses the concept of the mobile revolution, and shares the potential applications to libraries. This tailored learning experience includes expert guest speakers presenting ideas originally shared at the online Handheld Librarian conferences. The workshop outlines the major mobile technologies available for libraries and exact methods for applying them with strategies for success. It focuses on interactive discussions enhanced by the mobile tools themselves and features immersive hands-on learning and playing to deliver specific takeaways that attendees can immediately apply to their libraries. Bring your laptop/notebook/mobile device/tablet!

Are you a solo web developer with an interest in learning basic web scripting? A newbie thrown into your library web programming role because nobody else raised their hand? Somebody with a little more experience but always looking to improve your programming skills? This workshop is for you. Speakers work through the basics of web programming and highlight resources to continue learning. Their emphasis is on mashups and web services as a means to practice these skills. Featured topics include REST and Structured Data (e.g., JSON); common programming routines and functions; building simple video widgets with the YouTube API; mapping data with Google Maps; and learning how JavaScript (jQuery) and PHP work together to create advanced search mashups with the WorldCat API. Note: Attendees should bring a laptop to play along with the examples and have some familiarity with HTML and a scripting language.

“Digital preservation” and “digital curation” are phrases thrown about as frequently as iPads and Kindles these days, but unlike the latter, there aren’t any apps for “digital preservation.” As challenging as these concepts are to truly understand, the reality is that responsibility for saving our era from being remembered as the “Digital Dark Age” has fallen to libraries and archives. But, do you really understand what it means and what is required to preserve digital objects? Join us for this introductory-level, 3-hour workshop. We’ll take the mystery out of the terms and concepts and provide you with some real methods to begin (or further) your institution’s foray into this important and challenging area. The workshop leaders are graduates of the new Library of Congress Digital Preservation and Outreach Education (DPOE) Train-the-Trainer certificate program. Topics to be covered include six major areas:

1. Identify – What digital content do you have?
2. Select – What portion of that content is your responsibility to preserve?
3. Store – How should digital content be stored for the long term?
4. Protect – What steps need to be taken to protect your digital content?
5. Manage – What provisions should be made for long term management?
6. Provide – How should digital content be made available over time? Bring your questions and be prepared to consider your institution’s holdings and issues through the lens of best practices for digital preservation.

Online tutorials can be extremely time-intensive to create. Screencasts offer quicker ways to create informative tutorials that demonstrate online library resources or anything else on the web or your desktop. New tools make it quick and easy to create screencasts and host them online. Explore using free and fee software such as Jing, Camtasia Studio, and web-based services to quickly create online tutorials for your users. Compare hosting options at Screencast.com, YouTube, blip.tv, or Freescreencast. In addition to gathering proven tips, techniques, and tricks for quick screencast creation, see examples of advanced editing features such as call-outs, transitions, zooming, and highlights. Bring your own laptop to check out sites that are discussed. Show and tell the easy way!

The 2009 US IMPACT Survey provided libraries for the first time with statistically valid national data that could be used to show patron impact from their technology services. In 2011, another 400 libraries took advantage of a self-service version of the survey to gather data in their local communities that could be used to talk about the impact libraries are having on their patrons’ lives. This workshop uses case studies from participating libraries to demonstrate effective strategies for communicating with funding agencies and community-based organizations to building sustainable funding and effective partnerships. Through interactive discussions, videos of actual meetings between city council members and partner agencies, and highlights of successful library activities, you will learn ways of positioning libraries as valuable community assets using survey data. If you took the survey, this workshop will help you use the data effectively; if you didn’t, you will learn strategies for gathering and using data in your own community to help your library technology services thrive, not just survive.

This workshop has been canceled

Traditionally, public libraries have supported the consumption of knowledge: reading books, watching movies, listening to music. In the internet era, public libraries must the production of knowledge as well.

Personal electronics such as tablet computers, ebook readers, MP3 players, and other devices are now a common part of the media infosphere in the library world. Patrons are checking gadgets out from us, asking us for content that can be loaded on them, and at times just wishing that we could help them use them more effectively. This workshop examines current popular gadgets, talks about what’s on the near horizon for personal electronics, and takes time to answer common questions about the best way to deal with gadgets at your library. Since personal electronics aren’t designed to be used in library environments, it also discusses how to find a workflow and management process that makes sense in your situation.

Continuous access to information is a near reality. Smartphone and mobile devices are the tools that make it all possible. Providing content to these tools and devices presents interesting design and development challenges. Lost connections, limited battery power, smaller screens, touch interfaces — these factors create a new way of thinking about web application development and design. This workshop looks at trends in mobile interfaces, emerging conventions for mobile design, and best practices for mobile development, as well as wizards, tools, and code templates for mobile web app development. Come learn how the rules are changing and leave with the knowledge to start creating mobile sites at your library.

With our rapidly increasing and instantaneous access to information, it can be difficult to help people slice through the “data smog” and become fluent with information while critically assessing its value and purpose. This workshop introduces a variety of technical resources and research tools, and provides tips to help make learning more meaningful, engaging, and relevant, with the ultimate goal of providing learners with opportunities to create something new and exciting. Learn how to provide more visibility to library resources via Wikipedia; utilize real-time web/mobile services such as Twitter to share and discover content while connecting with others; understand how to manage digital identity; inspire learners to become active participants in our era of continuous techno- logical change; and collaborate within new social media spaces such as Google+ and SlideShare. The end goal is to help learners enrich their lives by constructing a personal learning environment, online or face-to-face, that is conducive to information discovery, sharing, and lifelong learning.

This workshop addresses key issues surrounding the creation, maintenance, and cultivation of digital repositories. Drawing on the latest literature, case studies, and personal experiences, speakers lead a discussion that covers planning the digital repository, selecting a methodology for its establishment, populating it with content, marketing it to the library’s constituencies, and meeting the various challenges and questions along the way. Participants have the opportunity to bring their own experiences to bear, as well as engage in group discussions regarding how to get the most out of a digital repository.

Video on the web is one of the most engaging, growing segments of web communication and interaction. Your patrons love web-based video, and with a little know-how, you can create videos that will be watched and shared by your customers. This in-depth workshop, featuring experts in the field of library videocasting, get you started. Come explore and discuss how libraries are using videocasts for outreach and learning through a variety of case studies, including tips on what types of content work best for different types of libraries. Detailed information on getting the most out of Youtube as a videohosting platform and other video hosting options are provided. Join this active group of video experts and have a look at video cameras, focus on the process of video creation and learn some easy ways to make your videos more watchable and interactive in the process.

Struggling with the variety of technologies available and how they could best be used to achieve your objectives? Want to know how to incorporate social networking, mobile apps, cloud computing, and other “latest-greatest” with proven core tools into information services? Join former IBM consultant Hulser and understand the elements of technology strategy planning and how to apply them. Learn how to create a strategic plan for your library, enabling effective use of technologies for your organizational needs. Bring your real-world issues and challenges and learn how to identify key elements of your current environment and organizational structure with an eye toward addressing needs. Tools for gaining approval to move forward are also explored.

Are you intrigued by the concept of innovation? Maybe you are a person who is known for coming up with innovative solutions, programs, or services? Or, perhaps, you want (or need) to become more innovative in your thinking and approach. Come explore, work, and play with the ideas of innovation in a half-day playshop that is more than just the usual workshop. Learn how to set your thinking free and let your innovative spirits play. Hear how others have bent the rules, broken them, or thrown them out the window altogether to create new approaches, projects, and programs, and discover what innovative thinking can mean to you and the job you do each day.

Website design is about more than choosing pretty colors. This interactive workshop takes you through the steps of a website redesign process, including the very important step of usability testing. Usability testing ensures your users experience (UX) is positive and successful. After this workshop, participants will be able to identify the aspects of their websites that are worth saving, the parts that need to change, and how to make it happen. The focus is on the desired end results and user needs, not coding!

Join our gamers and gadget lovers for an evening of fun and playing. Bring your latest games and gadgets and try out each other’s in areas set up for tablets, smartphones and ebook readers. There will also be live demos of how to transfer content to ereaders. Challenge your colleagues and see if you are a guitar hero, winning Wii bowler/golfer, or rank as a dancing DDR expert. Led by gamer/gadget gurus Amy Buckland, McGill University, Chad Mairn, Novare Library Services & Royce Kitts, Washburn University. Don’t forget to bring your latest gadgets to share and explore. Refreshments included.