PostConference:
Thursday, March 13
Workshop 12
- 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
- Charging for Information: Strategies for Success
- Barbie E. Keiser, College of Insurance, and Irene Wormell, Royal School of Librarianship
There are an increasing number of individuals who run their businesses by selling
tangible benefits stemming from the most intangible of products--INFORMATION-- and few
of these are traditional information professionals (i.e. librarians, documentalists,
records managers, archivists). Why should this be the case? This full day
workshop is designed to outline what is essential for establishing and running these
types of businesses within a traditional library, or transformed center, stressing
the importance of having solid strategies for pricing, the necessity of addressing
the market, being proactive and creative in sales shots, and always projecting the
image of credibility.
Workshop 13
- 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
- Transformation, Reengineering, Empowerment: Creating the Real Virtual Library
- Gary Pitkin, University of Northern Colorado
Cost containment in the private sector is being achieved through "transforming"
corporate culture based on "reengineering" the hierarchy with implementation
centered on "empowerment" to the work force. Higher education and local governments
are now examining, and in some cases implementing, these concepts to contain costs.
Academic and public libraries, as cost centers within parent organizations, are
substantially impacted. This full day workshop provides librarians and managers
with a basic introduction to transformation, reengineering, and empowerment. It not
only facilitates understanding and discussion of these issues in the work
environment, but also presents avenues for using these concepts to the library's
advantage in defining and creating the REAL virtual library. The progression from
transformation, to reengineering, to empowerment is linked to strategic planning,
financial redistribution, and structural reorganization.
Workshop 14
- 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
- Risk Taking in an Electronic Environment
- Johann van Reenen, Director, Centennial Science & Engineering Library, University of New Mexico
This half day workshop focuses on the importance of risk taking in an electronic
environment as well as the preparation, attitudes, and skill sets conducive to risk
taking. It will benefit those who are faced with risking new electronic skills, who
want to implement new services and ideas in traditional, sometimes resistant,
settings, and who are tentative to move into the new paradigm facing information
workers, especially in libraries. Participants will explore their attitudes to risk
taking; what holds them back; what are the benefits of taking risks as opposed to
letting things happen to one; why it is imperative to take risks, or join risktakers
in the evolving electronic information environment. This is especially important
for libraries and librarians where maintaining the status quo may result in loss to
the profession and its institutions. Participants will enjoy an interactive
experience as they take part in exercises and discussions in a confidential
environment, which will require some risk taking. At the end of the session they
will be able to develop a Risk Action Plan and will have a greater understanding of
their potential for productive risk taking and the benefits of doing so to
themselves and for their workplace.
Workshop 15
- 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
- Benchmarking
- Annette Gohlke, Library Benchmarking International
This half day workshop from the publisher of Library Benchmarking Newsletter focuses
on the Total Quality tool of benchmarking, what it is and how to use it to achieve
breakthrough improvements and increase library performance. Using a 5-step model,
the workshop addresses the pitfalls to avoid in conducting a benchmarking study and
demonstrates how to use benchmarking effectively in libraries to increase
productivity, improve customer service, and reduce operating costs. In addition to
information on benchmarking protocol, understanding library processes and
flowcharting them, and developing meaningful metrics, this workshop enables
attendees to prove their libraries' value in hard-hitting, quantitative terms and
identify success indicators.
Workshop 16
- 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
- The Evolution of a Web Site: The Creation and Management Stages
- Jodi L. Israel, MLS, Product Manager & Webmaster, Internet Resources, The Faxon Company
As a principle vehicle for communication, library web sites must be viewed with the
same critical eye as reference, cataloging or other traditional library functions in
order to advance our expertise in the digital information age. Creating a useful
and attractive homepage takes time, organization and some understanding of the
medium. However, with HTML WYSIWYG-style editors, creating the page is the easy
part. The challenge is managing the web site and using the hypertext medium to
your advantage. This half day workshop covers: creating a web site, the pros and
cons of HTML editors, knowing your audience/working with statistics, managing a web
site, who's doing it well, the ideal team for creating/managing a web site, and
developing the optimum strategy for growth.
Workshop 17
- 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
- Getting Your School on the Internet
- Larry Buchanan, Technology Coordinator, Poudre School District, Fort Collins, Colorado
This half day workshop is aimed at schools who need information on connecting to the
Internet. Different connectivity levels will be discussed from an individual
dial-in account, to a direct Internet connection from a school, to a wide-area
network strategy for multiple sites in a school district. Learn about the
requirements for networking within your school to get the best access to the
Internet, and learn what equipment is required to make the connection. Acquaint
yourself with the terminologies (routers, hubs,concentrators, frame relay,
ethernet, TCP/IP, web servers, etc.) associated with networking so you can converse
intelligently with network designers, installers and service providers. Also
prepare yourself for some basic issues you will face once you are connected such as
acceptable use policies, supervision issues, filtering, web publishing, management,
etc. Although much of the session will be technical in nature, the presentation
will be geared toward educators with a limited technical background and provide a
variety of handouts for future reference.
Workshop 18
- 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
- Library Intranets: Maximizing Benefits While Maintaining Efforts
- David J. Ives, Microcomputer Systems Group, Ellis Library, University of Missouri
Maintaining an intranet within your library can produce substantial benefits for the
library staff in terms of access to many kinds of information -- newsletters,
in-house reports, policies, lists of hotlinks, answers to frequently asked
questions, tips regarding specific processes and procedures, fast- or late-breaking
news items, and many more. Contrary to many expectations, such an intranet does not
necessarily require special server hardware and software, or even the full-time
services of a web administrator. A suitably-chosen web browser and a library's LAN
can, if used appropriately, provide access to a range of information with only
limited knowledge of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) by web authors. If combined
with inexpensive application software, other benefits are realized: even less
knowledge of HTML is required on the part of fewer staff and the time and effort for
intranet publication of long, complex or specialized documents can be reduced
significantly. This half day workshop shows that any library with an operational
network can, with very little effort and minimal cost, construct an intranet whose
structure and content can make a considerable amount of information and data
available to all staff.
Workshop 19
- 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
- Creating Effective Instructional Modules for the World Wide Web
- Ann Margaret Scholz, User Instruction Librarian, Purdue University
This half day workshop focuses on using WWW technology to create educational
modules. The workshop will cover the nature of instructing via the WWW, planning
and implementation schedules for WWW modules, design issues for educational
materials on the WWW, evaluating learners' comprehension via the WWW, and evaluating
effectiveness of materials created. The workshop will include several hands-on
activities for participants such as designing instructional pages and evaluating
sample instructional modules.
Workshop 20
- 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
- Moving Databases to the Web
- Margie Hlava, President & Jay Van Eman, CEO, Access Innovations, Inc.
Tired of viewing slick, graphically beautiful home pages with no content? The
average home page is less than 20 Kbytes of text -- feature rich and content poor.
If you would like substance behind your lovely front end, then learn what it takes
to turn your valuable collections into gold mines of intelligence. This half-day
workshop focuses on transforming legacy data into valuable SGML/HTML databases.
Topics included: defining legacy data, assessing the nature of your collection,
sizing the collection and analyzing the collection for conversion, comparative
survey of SGML/HTML authoring tools including their strengths and weaknesses from
the user perspective, converting large collections with SGML and HTML, looking at
real costs (applied to real life data collections), and costing large projects.
This workshop is essential for librarians and intranet developers facing clients
with high expectations and for developers of OPAC's or commercial, information-rich
products for the Internet.
Workshop 21
- 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
- Web-Based OPACs
- Peter Scott, University of Saskatchewan
This half day workshop shows how a library can create its own web-based catalog,
given a bit of programming on the server side. It illustrates some of the
off-the-shelf products available as well as some creative webCATS designed by
librarians. Issues also addressed include ease of maintenance, updating, amount of
technical support, and remote support.
Copyright © 1997, Information Today, Inc.
