It's Academic

Information Literacy Trends: Within the Virtual World of Second Life
Alexia Hudson, Penn State Great Valley/Donna Upshaw, Avatar Persona

What is Second Life?
An online, virtual 3-D multi-user, avatar-based “virtual world”developed by Linden Lab
More than 9.9 million ‘residents’ as of October 10, 2007
Membership is free; your avatar provides a catalyst for individuals to assume a “Second Life”
Alexia staffs the online virtual reference desk within Second Life

Why are people interested in Second Life?
It’s fun, first of all. Can do all sorts of things virtually; quadriplegics for instance can ‘fly’ in Second Life.

Second Life Demographics
~63% are between 25-44 years of age; avg. age is 33 (in adult grid)
~42% are women
-US constitutes about 26.5% of residents followed by Brazil, Japan, German, the UK, France and Italy (there is a translation device called ‘Babbler’ which doesn’t work in Japanese yet)

Type of info you have to give to register – name, credit card, has to be real name because of cultural norms which are tracked

Real Businesses & Educational Institutions
-Virtual Currency is called Linden Dollars, is exchanged for services & items in SL
-Current exchange rate $1 = $186 L
-Business Week featured first millionaire in Second Life in 2006
-Electric Sheep Company is one of the companies specializing in developing and managing virtual networks

Ed institutions using SL:
-Harvard Law School
-NYU
-Penn State, etc.

Penn State Second Life Pilot Project
–ETS (Ed Tech Services at PSU) purchased several virtual islands within SL (Penn State Isles)
–http://ets.tit.psu.edu/gaming/ – Penn State Educational Gaming Commons Blog
-Penn State began investigation in 2005
-They believe avatar based learning applications will become the ‘norm’ for the next generation of Penn State students

Second Life’s Connection to Librarianship and Info Lit
-at Penn State, have used in 2 courses:
Operations Management and Information Science Seminar, total of 43 students; built a virtual library for students

Trends
-Students & their employers identified the library as the place for info & instruction of Second Life
-Librarians gave students a space in Second Life to play with and learn aspects of SL
-Virtual Reference/Distance Ed: time in SL given course-related instruction, reference consultations, and providing resources (landmarks) to qualified SL locations for Research projects

It’s essentially a tool for distance education, only avatar-based. For example, a class will meet online in a room with avatars. There is more classroom interaction with avatars since it doesn’t require the bandwidth that webcasting does.

May need to add more RAM on computer to sustain gaming environment. Crashing computers is a fairly common occurrence.

The pilot courses using Second Life are synchronistic, not asynchronistic; students have to be there at the time the course meets.

Probably not appropriate for vision-impaired students because SL is so visually oriented.

Lots of questions from the audience; for many of us, this is a new concept and people are trying to ‘wrap their minds’ around Second Life.

Can be highly addictive in terms of time; do have to manage your time.

Is a highly monitored environment; ‘Big Brother is watching’ — socially inappropriate behavior is monitored and banned.

Learning Ecology
–can simulate a possible ‘real world’ business scenarios prior to implementation
–fostering a unique learning environments

Launching a Redesign of your Library’s Web site? What do your users want?
Bonnie Oldham, U of Scranton, Tina Hertel, Lehigh University

Part 1, Bonnie Oldham
Library Dean Charles Kratz had suggested getting input from users; got internal grant money and IRB approval for their focus groups.

Target groups
-faculty
-grad students
-traditional undergrads
-works study students
-distance learners
-students with disabilities

Very labor intensive — 900 letters, over 300 emails, about 26 users
Moderators: grad students in the School Counseling Program; focus groups held in library
Librarian had online interview with distance learners and students with disabilities

Results were audio-taped and transcribed by moderators

Key Themes:
1 – Ease of use
2 – Home page style issues
3 – User name and password
4 – Database access page

Followed up focus groups with Web usability testing. Observed participants completing a set of tasks using the Library’s Web site; used Camtasia Studio screen recorder. Was an amazing experience; many could not find the article to which they had a citation.

Redesign process
-librarians reviewed all input and then examined other Library Web sites to compile a list of desirable features
-committee met with official University PR committee
-when had a draft of page designed by professional designer, went back to users and surveyed about new page

First version; they liked fact that all the important links were on left side. Left some white space for important notices to users, e. g., a database down for maintenance.

Important feature was implementing single sign on for users; eliminated need to have remote user links. About six months after implementing page, got a tab on University portal page. Had just the links that were needed, not the bells and whistles.

Actual timeline was almost 2 years for new page to go live.

Part II, Tina Hertel
Accessible Web Design

Tina mentioned that students with disabilities are often not kept in mind when Web page is designed. She referred users to her handout with summaries of the law.

Ten Quick Tips from the Web Accessibility Initiative
1- Images & animation — Some folks do use text-only, turning off images. Make sure content is still available to them. Important to consider context, to make sure that context that picture conveys is not lost to this user. Can turn feature on in Dreamweaver to add ‘alt’ tag to provide more info. Tag does convey info to user what the image is, that is, a link or image. Always have an alt attribute when there is an image. Use an empty alt attribute if the image doesn’t contribute anything (like a spacer line); then screen reader won’t read it. But if you don’t have an alt attribute, and the screen reader will say there is an unknown image.

2 – Image maps – always use client-side image maps, NOT server-side image maps. If you’re scripting, that is server-side.

3- Multimedia

4 – Navigation – make sure Web page is keyboard accessible; tab key allows users to jump from link to link; enter key allows users to ‘click on a link’; mouse only options limit users. Drop-down images are problematic if you use Java script, be sure to use ‘on focus’ option. Annoying things for users are text like: click here, more, link, link to, go here, more — doesn’t give any info on where the link is going; provide context. Appearance: underline and color are standard conventions.

5 – Structure, content, organization – try to keep content separate from structure. CSS helps with this. It’s OK to use tables with screen readers; they’ve gotten smarter. Dreamweaver can distinguish if for layout or content purposes.

6- Graphs & charts – in alt attributes, convey what kind of info chart contains.

7 – Scripts, applets & plug-ins

8 – Frames – bad. Don’t use them. If you do use them, use appropriate titles, have no frames option, have alternate navigation options. Cascading Style Sheets take care of this.

9 – Tables – can use them. For complex tables, there are newer accessibility codes.

10 – Check your work and validate it. Bobby has been bought out; now called WebXACT. Plug in URL and check accessibility of page. Free online version will evaluate one page at a time.

Tina’s favorite pages for accessibility (from her handout) are Web Accessibility in Mind and Dive Into Accessibility.

Where Angels Fear to Tread: Devising a Lean and Mean Reference Collection
Gumberg Library, Reference Dept., Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA
Allison Brungard & Sandra Collins

What to do about the print reference collection? Considerable maintenance, not much usage. How they went about it, what was involved. Not how we done it good, but ‘don’t do what I did.’ Criteria: Currency, significance, and relevance.

Sandy spoke first. Budgetary considerations were a large part of it. Reference is prime real estate; library wanted an information commons. Collection had not been weeded for a time. Has been a reorientation to how to do reference; standard reference works like Sheehey and Katz are simply not being used, even by reference librarians. Are the materials timely? Do we even know what’s there, if it’s outside of our subject specialty?

Another question they asked was whether more of the reference collection should circulate. Probably, since librarians aren’t really using much of the collection. Avoid like the plague Internet guides — out of date once they’re published. Bibliographies in the Zs should be in the subject areas. Obsolete formats — why get phone books, CIA Fact Book, when available online.

How did they do this? First began by updating Reference Collection Development Policy to reflect new priorities. Collection has outgrown the space, and they needed to deselect (not ‘weed’). Does the item deserve to be in Reference? If not, then where does it belong? Needed to create a consensus among reference librarians and went to liaison librarians (bibliographers). Took about 4 months to this point.

Wanted to keep process relatively simple, a few basic questions/priorities. Don’t tell me what was done in past; does it belong in this collection? The process for weeding Reference was a pilot for weeding the entire collection.

How was the weeding actually done? Allison spoke to this. They wanted a lasting record of how the process was done. They started with 9400 records (not individual titles), imported 6800 records into an Access db of all Reference titles. Assigned different librarians different LC call number ranges. Had to be able to share the db to work on it; on a shared server.

Only decisions that could be made about a title:
1) Keep in Reference
2) Move to stacks
3) Withdraw completely

Had to allow for some flexibility; set a terminal date for decision making. In hindsight, should have had a field for over sized; did hold them up a bit.

Positives (‘Blessings’):
-taking ownership of a large, multi-departmental project
-increased confidence that you can go over to the shelves and pull something that would be worthwhile
-did provide a blueprint for weeding rest of collection

Negatives (‘Curses’)
-too many stakeholders means that the project can get bogged down
-some who feel slighted by project can create discord; internal politics
-some will want more or different choices than those offered by the project parameters; some people can’t make a decision (notes field was kept purposely small)

Had to take into consideration the human element; had to work with folks to help them make decisions. Had to get them to focus on whether or not the book belonged in the collection; not questioning relative worth of book, just its relevance to the Ref collection.

Project is still ongoing. Continue to add new books to database. Updating the collection now involves pricing print vs. electronic. If electronic, then becomes an Electronic Resources Committee decision. Bought the Gale Philosophy, Religion, and Literature Center, but is still librarian-directed.

Recommendations:
-Communicate expectations; have participants try out the process and report back by a specified deadline
-Get organizational buy-in
-Clarify decision-making authority; who has responsibility
-Set solid deadlines but have a back-up plan
-Limit the number of decision makers

One year later…
-Kept 35% of Reference books; withdrew 10% of materials, rest (55%) went to general collection
-Have more room for tables
-Most books not yet moved; backlog in tech services
-First electronic purchases on the horizon: Narrowed choices to Gale & Oxford collections

Q & A
Was usage tracked? No, hadn’t done that. Would have been helpful. Did ask, “Have you ever had a question about that?” as criteria. One library made tick marks on inside of cover when used book for a transaction. One library tracks usage in library instruction. Is this really use if users aren’t using.

-LN