What’s Brewing - The Innovative Interfaces Blog » Spenser Thompson

Follow Innovative on Twitter

Spenser Thompson — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:05:45 +0000

Innovative Interfaces is now on Twitter. Please follow us (www.twitter.com/iii_Innovative) and you’ll see up-to-the-moment tweets on what libraries are doing with Innovative products, event activities, product updates, and more!

Innovative Users Convene for 2009 Annual Meeting

Spenser Thompson — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:50:53 +0000

The Innovative Users Group (IUG) Annual Conference takes place in Anaheim, CA beginning this Sunday with the Pre-conference and continuing through Wednesday, May 20. The IUG tells us that over 1,000 attendees from 13 nations will participate in over 160 programs at the event. Attendees will give presentations on best practices for using Innovative products, discuss creative and unique implementations of technology, and report on partnerships with the company’s product-development team.

Innovative staff will be on hand at the Innovative Information Center. Located in California C/D at the Anaheim Convention Center, the Information Center offers opportunities to meet with sales and training staff, as well as the second-annual Library Service Live!—a series of short presentations brought to you by Innovative’s service staff. Topics include Encore, WebPAC, WebBridge, CSDirect, Holds Management, and more. For times and schedule of Library Service Live! please download this flyer.

I’ll also be on hand so please do say hello and tell me what’s going on in your library. I’ll also have my camera handy and be taking a few snapshots for Innovative’s Flickr stream. You can also follow the IUG goings-on via IUG’s Flickr group.

For more on the conference schedule please see the IUG’s conference information page at http://innovativeusers.org/iug-conferences.

See you there!

What’s Going On? Program Registration 3.0!

Spenser Thompson — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:58:59 +0000

Program Registration is a full-featured solution that manages and publicizes all the events, classes, and other goings-on at your library—and our latest version is better than ever. Listen to this podcast interview with Sarah Hickman Auger to learn about how libraries are using it and why the new enhancements in Program Registration 3.0 are so popular. You’ll also hear success stories from different types of libraries…from public, to academic, to consortia. If you are in Denver for ALA Midwinter 2009 this week, please stop by the Innovative booth (#1204) to see the newest library event calendar and Program Registration features in action.

Innovative at LITA 2008

Spenser Thompson — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:29:18 +0000

Innovative is a sponsor of the Library and Information Technology (LITA) conference once again and we are proud to do so. I’ll be heading out to LITA 2008 in Cincinnati, Ohio along with my colleagues Sandy Hurd, Director of Strategic Markets, and Dinah Sanders, Encore Senior Product Manager. Dinah will be presenting along with Kelly M. Vickery of the University of Kentucky, which is an Encore development-partner library. Here’s the info:

Participation and Power: Combining Community Features with Existing Metadata in NextGen Public Interfaces
Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza
4th Floor, Rosewood Room
Sunday, October 19th
9am – 10.10am

You can also find us at the Sponsor Showcase Reception in the Pavilion Ballroom on Friday, October 17 from 7-8pm. Saturday and Sunday we will be in the Hall of Mirrors room at the Sponsor Showcase. For more information, LITA has posted the final schedule on their website. We hope to see you there!

Encore Harvester Helps You Find Stuff You Didn’t Know the Library Had

Spenser Thompson — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:42:15 +0000

Don’t you love browsing around a library? I do. Maybe it’s one of the reasons you wound up working in a library. You may even stumble upon something you didn’t know the library had or a special room with a unique collection. The more inclusive a general library search is online, the more opportunities for this kind of happy accident. Around Innovative some of us call it “serendipitous discovery.” It’s a mouthful but you get the idea!

A case in point is how libraries are using the new Encore Harvester to bring in local special collections to the main Encore results-set. Take a look at this Encore search for Willa Cather at University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, and you will find books and electronic resources—plus Willa Cather photos, ephemera, and finding aids harvested from several local sources. Cather is a noted author with Nebraska connections. Here’s one of the Libraries’ images of her sitting in a Paris park…

From this simple keyword search, Encore also presents collection facets (on the left side of the screen) that limit to Cather materials from harvested collections—University Finding Aids, the Willa Cather Archive, and CONTENTdm.

The Cather materials are just part of the 200,000 items from seven Encore Harvester projects at UNL Libraries. For more on these collections see our recent press announcement.

Congratulations to the Be Innovative! Award Winners

Spenser Thompson — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:35:05 +0000

This year’s IUG Annual Conference in Washington, DC was a gigantic success and we’d like to acknowledge the 1600 attendees and the winners of the Be Innovative! Awards…

Most Innovative Implementation of eResource Discovery

Birmingham Public Library (AL) was recognized for using WebBridge LR (Link Resolver) to link to Amazon.com for e-resource discovery in WebPAC Pro, Innovative’s online catalog product.

Most Innovative Staff Program

Las Vegas-Clark County Library District (NV) won first-place honors for “Concierge Key with Self-Check.” This innovation allows library staff to work more efficiently with third-party self-check workstations.

The second place award was presented to West Palm Beach Public Library (FL) for developing a training Wiki that includes technology competencies for various topics including Millennium.

Most Innovative WebPAC

Mid-Hudson Library System (NY) accepted first place honors for their New Kids Catalog, which takes advantage of features and customization opportunities in the new KidsOnline product.

The Watzek Library of Lewis and Clark College (OR) tied for second place for Most Innovative WebPAC. The College was recognized for their “Easy Course Reserves Requesting,” which enables instructors find an item in the catalog and automatically generate an email to the circulation department reserving the item and indicating course number and loan period.

“Implementation of AirPAC” also earned New Zealand’s Libraries for a Greater Auckland Region (eLGAR) second-place recognition. Library staff created a Flash-driven “web tour” to promote the launch of AirPAC, Innovative’s wireless online catalog application for small-screen devices.

Most Innovative Patron Services

Ryerson University Library (Canada) won first-place honors for applications that enable users to access the library website, including WebPAC Pro, from their page on the Facebook social-networking website.

Recognized in second place, Hong Kong Baptist University Library staff used the Millennium Patron API to integrate user-specific notices from the library into iCalendar-compatible applications.

Jerry Kline, Innovative’s Chairman and CEO (center), presented the “Starfire” crystal awards to representatives of the winning libraries…

Left to right: Jim Hayes, Regional Branch Services Director, Las Vegas-Clark County Library District; Barbara Storch, Technical Services Manager, West Palm Beach Public Library (FL); Tobin Cataldo, Information Systems Manager, Birmingham Public Library (AL); Jerry Kline, Chairman and CEO, Innovative Interfaces; Hamish McDonald, Director, eLGAR (New Zealand); Graham McCarthy, Multimedia Developer, Ryerson University Library (Canada); and Laurie Shedrick, Automated Systems Manager, Mid-Hudson Library System (NY).

You can check out all the ceremony pictures on Flickr. For more on the IUG check out their website.

See you next year!

Librarian Trumps Edison?

Spenser Thompson — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:42:06 +0000

There’s a fascinating article that just appeared in the New York Times about Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, the man who made a sound recording (of a woman singing) that predates Edison’s.

Since preservation is an obsession of librarians, Scott’s biography is interesting:

Scott is in many ways an unlikely hero of recorded sound. Born in Paris in 1817, he was a man of letters, not a scientist, who worked in the printing trade and as a LIBRARIAN (emphasis mine). He published a book on the history of shorthand, and evidently viewed sound recording as an extension of stenography. In a self-published memoir in 1878, he railed against Edison for “appropriating” his methods and misconstruing the purpose of recording technology. The goal, Scott argued, was not sound reproduction, but “writing speech, which is what the word phonograph means.”

But is it really a sound recording or a transcription of sound that was never intended to be played…?

Scott’s device had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a stylus, which etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp. The recordings were not intended for listening; the idea of audio playback had not been conceived. Rather, Scott sought to create a paper record of human speech that could later be deciphered.

Granted, preservation of digital formats is a serious concern, but who knows if one day there will be a way to play back data that no longer has a player to play it? Or that seems damaged beyond repair. Some awfully smart people are already trying.

You know the expression, “If walls could talk?” Maybe walls will talk one day. Maybe we’ll be able to play back conversations that take place in a room by scanning the paint. Shudder to think!

Example of an ancient playing device from 1976 a.d. The Panasonic boom box prototype. It played something called “cassette tapes.” (The final product spread hip-hop around NYC… “You know I can’t live without my radio!”)

Librarian trumps Edison? Scott seems to think he did. At any rate I’m curious about what folks think about this article…I’m sure there are tons of people in the library world that know more about preservation than I.

Program Management in a Large Public Library Environment

Spenser Thompson — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:08:37 +0000

Here’s a little interview I did with Sarah Hickman, a Product Manager at Innovative for the Program Registration product. Our discussion focuses on “Program Management in a Large Public Library Environment.” Innovative has been working with partners like Scottsdale Public Library to manage program information efficiently and bring public program information into the discovery environments where libraries make their content available.

Sarah will be at PLA 2008 at the Innovative booth (#1201) if you want to come by and see what she’s doing with program technology first-hand…

Smells like teen library?

Spenser Thompson — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:08:59 +0000

Did you become a librarian because a copy of the AACR II was accidentally sent to you? Or because of the sensory experience of the library…the sound (maybe quieter than other public spaces), the sight of all those books in one place, people doing their best to buckle down and study. And yes, maybe even the smell. Perhaps a paper-like, dry, woody scent…work with me here.

Actually there’s tons of literature on the marketing of libraries so may I be the first (probably not) to talk about smell and marketing libraries. Actually there’s a big precedent for things olfactory in marketing, and not just in foods and new cars. Singapore Airlines long-standing “Singapore Girl” ad campaign focuses on the idea of the great service, and at one time (warning politically incorrect!!) they had a special perfume that all the attendants wore. Also the smell of coffee, rather than the taste, is commonly used in TV ads as the hook.

I was reminded of the whole smell issue when Starbucks recently announced they were going to focus more on coffee, get rid of their sandwiches, and stop building stores quite so quickly. This in response to slowing growth at the company. In fact the issue was raised in an internal memo at Starbucks. The press, Wall Street analysts, and people like me all have raised the smell being “turned off” at Starbucks. In the meantime Dunkin Donuts (!) and McDonalds (!!) started getting kudos for the taste of their coffees. To coin a phrase you can’t tell “What’s Brewing” in Starbucks with your nose.

Cool Logo, Good Coffee - America Runs on Dunkin!

It’s sort of an allegory for staying focused, keeping on the scent trail, or your nose to the grindstone when it comes to business. Starbucks got too focused on rapid expansion and being all things to all customers and it hurt them.

So what’s my point? Well, smell matters. And more importantly libraries are a complete experience whether you want them to be or not. The brand association to libraries is books but the library brand, when someone comes in the door, is more than that. It’s a broad, constantly evolving image in users’ minds. And because libraries serve communities, librarians have some control over its direction.

And while I support the use of libraries by homeless folks or people that don’t smell so hot–and I am not advising lighting incense or devising a eau de library cologne–everything sensory is part of your library’s brand. People remember how you make them feel as well as the services you offer.

Q&A: Facets, Tag Clouds, and Shoe Shopping

Spenser Thompson — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:13:15 +0000

Here’s the first in a series of “Q&A” podcasts with Innovative staff. We’re calling this one Dinah Sanders on Three Challenges for New Discovery Tools.

Dinah is the Senor Product Manager for Encore and she hits on a few of its features like facets and tag clouds. There’s also a fun search example about shoe shopping…

Dinah at ALA Annual 2007

By the way the intro music is a little loud at the beginning and goes on too long for my taste, but I kind of like the mellow, techno-BBC vibe…