Our celebrated super searcher and host of Searchers Academy returns with one of the most popular conference sessions to help you turbocharge your web research. With up-to-the-minute updates and jampacked-with-valuable-tips, Bates helps you become a super searcher by sharing strategies for more effectively searching the web.

What’s new in the search engine (SE) world? Notess casts a discerning eye on the SE landscape and shares key changes and new directions, looks at what the future holds, and discusses the implications of these evolving changes for librarians and researchers. Gain solid insights from our experienced searcher and SE watcher.

This Pecha Kucha-like session features experts and practitioners with lots of tips to share about searching “real-time” material — tracking events, issues, places, brands, jobs, etc., in searchable real-time content such as major news sources, blog postings, forums, image and video postings; getting the best from Bing; top tools for adding value to search and creating products and services for clients; using semantic search; and more.

We all continue to be overwhelmed by the formidable ocean of data and information washing over us through a variety of different channels and formats. This session explores how data visualization tools and techniques can help to better understand, interpret, and explain large quantities of data and information. It specifically addresses how the application of search, text, and data visualization enables more efficient “boiling of the ocean” of data so more time can be spent formulating valuable conclusions, implications, and recommendations. Schirle provides a case study of how a geospatial information system (GIS) offers a unique and important mechanism to support parliamentary deliberations. CRS uses the extensive analysis and visualization capabilities within a GIS to help make complex issues more easily and fully understandable to Congress, and to identify relationships between objects, places, and policies that effect legislative deliberations and public policy outcomes.

VIVO is an NIH-funded research tool developed by Cornell for discovering information about researchers, their accomplishments, professional activities, and research interests. It supports open development through simple, standard semantic web technologies. The ultimate goal is to facilitate collaborations among researchers. Content in any local VIVO installation may be maintained manually or brought into VIVO in automated ways from local systems, commercial vendors, government agencies, or professional organizations. The data is stored as RDF using standardized ontologies to enable linked data. This session starts with a brief overview of the VIVO collaboration and local VIVO implementation at the University of Florida where data is harvested from both local sources (HR, grants databases, course catalogs) and external sources (PubMed, Collexis, ISI Thompson Scientific). This is followed by a panel discussion touching on VIVO.

This session focuses on making great library websites by examining what makes other websites successful. Expect some important do’s and don’ts and be ready to geek out about things like web forms, web writing, and white space. Our experienced designers will leave you with a list of big and small ideas to make your library’s website easier to use and more engaging.

Let’s face it — we can’t always overhaul our library’s entire website. Sometimes, we just need ways to improve on what we have, due to cost, expertise, or political barriers. There are lots of things you can do with very little to improve your library’s site. Solomon provides some quick and practical ideas about potential ways to polish your site without busting your library’s budget or eating up tons of staff time. Zealand and company provide a case study of how one medium-sized public library created a large web presence through the seamless integration of a library news blog and social media into the official website, using free web tools — Blogger, Yahoo! Pipes, Facebook, Twitter, and more, creating an active online community for library users, staff, and volunteers.

In the midst of discussion about how to best utilize emerging technologies to reach out to patrons, the LRS has been studying how prevalent these technologies are in libraries, and examining the characteristics of libraries that are adopting them. Our speakers share the findings of the 2010 study, detailing how the landscape has changed since the inaugural research in 2008. Lupien discusses how a library team developed a more user-focused approach to emerging services development by asking students a number of questions designed to guide library priorities and looked at their use of technology, as well as their preferences and online behaviors. Lupien and Oldham share the results of this research, which challenge some of the assumptions made by librarians about Millenials and technology, and highlight the key findings to guide and inform libraries as they establish priorities in developing emerging services.

In his book, In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, Matthew May outlines the elements of elegance, a tricky but exquisite combination of four potentially competing concepts — symmetry, subtraction, sustainability, and seduction. Learn more about how this model can advance libraries, encourage staff to think about old problems in new ways, discover elegant solutions to common or not-so-common library and user experience (UX) problems, and be stirred on to create elegantly inspired libraries.

Nelson starts with an introduction to Drupal for those who want to know how an open source content management system can work for them. It includes a discussion of what it takes to install and set it up, how it works as a website creation tool, some caveats, and some practical examples. Prior to beginning a Drupal migration, Widner’s library used Engaged Patrons Service to register patrons for events and as an events calendar. Widner describes how her library was able to have the best of both worlds: Drupal and Engaged Patrons Service. She walks participants through the steps to integrate external data sources into Drupal and shows how to filter an RSS feed in both an HTML format using Yahoo! Pipes and a Drupal format using the feeds and views modules to create a dynamic website for patrons.

The London Libraries Consortium, representing 12 public libraries covering 3 million citizens, was designed to encourage library services to share experiences and developments to create tangible benefits for users and to increase efficiencies in working and procurement for library authorities. Hear their practical tips and techniques for making it work successfully, how their users have responded, how they deal with ebooks and access to broader library systems with one card, and how they use knowledge exchange to continue to partner for innovation and new services.

One of the major obstacles facing digital repositories at academic institutions is getting faculty to contribute their content. Get insights and ideas from one success story, DigitalCommons@ILR, which now holds content from nearly 70% of the faculty at Cornell University’s ILR School, having worked with faculty to capture content that pushes the boundaries of traditional institutional repositories. Hear about their strategies, practices, experiences, and lessons learned. Reynolds and Kaplan share the secrets of a 10-year partnership between the U.S. ISSN Center at LC and the Serials Solutions editorial team, illustrate how the partnership has enabled both organizations to learn from each other, balancing the public and private aspects of librarianship and metadata collection, and talk about plans to move forward.

Join our veteran marketer, Dempsey, for this fast-paced look at building alliances to help gain respect, trade for otherwise costly services, and grow library advocates. Filled with ideas for partnering with local businesses and organizations and applicable to all types of libraries, Dempsey provides loads of insights and practical tips for building community partnerships. Frey discusses how the Red Deer Public Library created online forums for municipal elections to provide information to voters about candidates for mayor, city council, and school boards and allowed the library to connect with the community in a very positive way, having provided significant marketing and advocacy benefits through the years. He talks about the web tools used to develop the election forum (including Drupal, RSS feeds, blogs and microblogs, social networking sites, tagging, and audio-visual support), peeks under the hood of an operational online community engagement project, and discusses issues, pitfalls, and unexpected benefits.

Library Research Guide's Information Today, Inc. reports the top-line results of a comprehensive study of library spending and budgeting plans for 2011.  Researchers Wilson and McKendrick provide insights based on the results of their survey of 1,200 librarians last fall.  How does your budget compare to national averages?  How do your library technology plans for 2011 match up to other libraries ­ academic, public, government and special ­ in North America?   Don't miss the invaluable strategic take-aways from these remarks.

Done right, SharePoint is a powerful collaboration tool that can transform the way your organization does business. This session takes a practical look at SharePoint’s strengths and weaknesses and offers a host of tips and best practices to help your organization get the most out of this powerful tool while avoiding common pitfalls that can turn the SharePoint dream into a technology nightmare.

Hear how libraries of any size can promote their services, collections, and training with fun, creative methods using applications like YouTube, iLike.com, and Facebook or software like Joomla, or Dapper.net. Use YouTube to promote your DVD collection; iLike.com to promote your CD collection and technology training; and Dapper.net to create apps, RSS feeds, custom widgets, Google gadgets, etc., that promote your news items, blogs, and other content. Create a simple mobile site with Joomla for patrons on the go with a look at WorldCAT Mobile. Also hear about the qualities and distinguishing characteristics of Facebook and Twitter, their different forms of social communication, and about the best ways to utilize them or alternatives to promote your library.

Social media, like everything, requires resources. It takes people, time, and technology to make it happen. This session focuses on how one library is meshing together their social media strategies with web and marketing plans to effectively communicate and connect with customers and how to show ROI. Hart discusses how social media goals link directly to organizational communication strategies, strategic plan, and managing their brand. What are social metrics? How do social metrics fit within a social media plan? How can we use cross disciplinary approaches and ideas to quantify and measure “soft stuff” such as buzz, engagement, reach, influence and sentiment? Hear the answers at this session.

This session discusses the results and impact of the first large-scale study of who uses public computers and internet access in U.S. public libraries and how it benefits individuals, families, and communities. The results provide a powerful supplement to locally collected data to show community impact from these services. Speakers explore ways data collected about public access computer use can demonstrate the value of your services in the community and provide valuable information to evaluate and help improve services to meet the needs of your constituents. They share successful approaches to using the data to advocate for funding and support for public access computing including a recent example of Paul LeClerc’s winning campaign for restoring funding to the New York Public Library.

In an increasingly digital world, the ways that customers interact with their library and recognize the services and resources it has to offer are also increasingly digital. The NIST Research Library uses a combination of traditional, new, evolving, and experimental means to market its services and resources. This presentation highlights some of the forward-looking, evolving, and pilot marketing programs that the library has implemented and demonstrates how easy it is to implement some of these innovative programs using free or low-cost resources, such as making clever animations and videos and imaginative graphics. They also offer tips and tricks to maximize the impact of current marketing programs.

Libraries and other information-intensive organizations must identify, manage and communicate measures that matter to their stakeholders, and that demonstrate that their services are making a difference—the “right” difference. Jones provides a framework for defining, analyzing and conveying measures that are meaningful to your situation, and that may not ever mention circulation. She reports on an informal survey of measures public, government and academic libraries are finding most meaningful.

The move towards ebooks has many school media centers abandoning traditional print reference resources and a handful of schools jettisoning traditional collections altogether. With myriad electronic resources available at the click of a mouse, the notion of collection has never been more amorphous or more important as we determine how to identify and filter resources to best serve the Digital Natives who are our students. In this first of two sessions devoted to ebooks in education, four school librarians from diverse settings will discuss some factors to keep in mind as we determine how “e” school libraries need to be in this digital age. Topics include when databases trump print (and when they might not), what to look for when licensing ebooks, and pitfalls and opportunities for librarians collecting in a brave new world.

Many students are among the consumers investing in e-reading devices, and many school libraries are piloting hardware loans to gauge the appeal and practicality of a switch to digital formats. This second session on ebooks in education provides an up-to-the-minute survey of the constantly changing ebook landscape, paying particular attention to the instructional advantages and potential pitfalls when using dedicated ereader devices in the school environment. The presenters offer an overview of the most common e-reader devices and applications, files, formats, and DRM issues related to ebook content; some practical concerns when purchasing ebooks; ethnographic response from teens using e-readers; and sources for free ebooks.

The way authors and students connect is changing enormously owing to the internet. For the last 2 years, Catherine Balkin, who has been arranging author visits in schools for more than 20 years, researched and worked on Skype chats for authors in schools and libraries. Learn some of the things she and her authors and illustrators have learned in the process. Join in a Skype chat with children’s book author Elizabeth Levy to hear about online chats from an author’s perspective.

In this session, two Phillips Academy librarians will demonstrate practical applications for teaching with LibGuides to collaborating and noncollaborating faculty and others across campus. Strategies include providing consistent learning experiences across the curriculum; creating guides for nonresearch-driven courses; building one-shot sessions to deliver advanced information fluency skills; and collecting and organizing resources in subjects, courses, and/or assignments.

Learn the four cornerstones to a successful marketing strategy for your school library, including how to create your unique brand, determine your target audience, recognize your strengths, and mold your image. Geiger and Arriaga will share the techniques they use to target the different segments of their patron base, including faculty, students, and administration. Learn how marketing strengthened their library’s role in the curricular life of the school and demonstrated their value to administrators.