Join us at the Monterey Public Library for an interactive discussion about using insights and imagination as info pros to add value in our communities. We’ll talk about people, technology, and libraries, so bring your war stories and your questions and be prepared to share—this is definitely not a “sage on the stage” event. (PowerPoints are forbidden!) This unstructured conversation may range from web presence to user experience to info commons to everything in between that affects all types of libraries.

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.

With more than 25 years of technology training for librarians between them, Sauers and Burns take you through the ins and outs of technology planning for your library. Topics include not only the whys of technology planning but also the how—from formulating your library’s technology goals to technologies you should be planning for now. By the end of this workshop, attendees will be prepared to return to their libraries and get the process going in this world of ever-changing tech.

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 development and design. This workshop looks at trends in mobile interfaces, mobile sites vs. mobile apps, emerging conventions for mobile design, best practices for mobile development, wizards, tools and code templates for mobile site development. Come learn how to start creating mobile sites at your library.

Are we using the same methods to promote e-resources as we did in the past for print materials? Is there a better way to assure that our clients are aware of the e-resources available and are able to make the most of these products? This workshop guides participants through the process of developing realistic and flexible marketing strategies for e-resources utilizing Web 2.0 technologies and 21st-century approaches. It helps library staffs create a comprehensive plan of action designed to meet the needs of any library. Keiser includes discussions on mixing and matching marketing techniques to achieve desired objectives and raising awareness concerning new products and services.

At its core, WordPress is a terrific blogging system—it’s where its roots are. But as WordPress has matured, it’s grown into an excellent choice for a content management system (CMS). WordPress should be a CMS option for any library looking for a dynamic online presence that makes it easy to create and publish content. With a bit of creative tweaking, WordPress is also a wonderful choice for larger, more complex sites and projects, such as learning management systems, social networks, digital archives, and even an interface for a library catalog. Topics include practical plug-ins, podcasting, theming, content types, social networking integration, site analytics, security, optimization, and much more.

LibGuides is a hosted content management system for posting subject guides, course guides, information portals, etc., to the web. The basic LibGuides display options for colors and styles are limited. This workshop goes beyond the basic options, and will provide techniques for customizing the LibGuides interface by using CSS and adding custom headers and footers. Using these techniques, it is possible to customize the interface to create a unique look for your LibGuides site. CampusGuides is a similar product and will be used in a hands-on situation. It is expected that attendees have some experience with HTML and CSS.

Intranets should provide quick and easy access to organizational information, whether in libraries or corporations. Moreover, the days of top-down communication and controlled internal messages are—or should be—behind us. Many libraries have been moving their intranet sites away from the traditional HTML design and toward content management systems, notably the open source product Drupal. In this interactive workshop by experienced web librarians, speakers provide accounts of migrating their libraries’ intranets into the Drupal content management system (CMS), sharing best practices and lessons learned.