Assignment 4, Option 1

It's been great taking this class with all of you. I've learned quite a bit, and hope I put it to good use!  I chose Option 1 for Assignment 4.  I wrote a little about Place-Based Learning and Mobile Technology.  I look forward to reading your papers.  I also hope I get to see you guys in some other classes.  Best of luck in your future endeavors!  Here is the link to my paper:

Place-Based Learning and Mobile Technology

Almost Over

This class went by so quickly, but covered so much information!  I feel like I touched on different topics with which I wasn't that familiar, so I'm glad I had the chance to take this class.  Just a little more work to do, and we're all finished and on to the next thing.  I wish everyone the best in their studies.  Nice getting the chance to have a little insight into each of you. I wouldn't have had that chance without this class.  Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Assignment 3, Option 1: Interview with Jesse Saunders

For Assignment 3, I contacted a few librarians in order to initiate a conversation with them on their library's use of a CMS.  I didn't hear back in a timely fashion, so I ended up going to my alma mater's (Southwestern University) library website and contacting the person in charge of "library systems and web services."  His name is Jesse Saunders, and he responded right away.  He was glad to help describe his experiences designing the web page and using a CMS.  I conducted my interview with him via e-mail.  Thank you so much, Mr. Saunder's, for your cooperation and valuable time you shared for my assignment.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

1.  In what library environment do you work?

Jesse:   We are an academic library serving a residential liberal arts university of 1,300 students.

2.  How did you hear about the CMS your library chose, and why did you select it?

Jesse:   In 2007 our university migrated most web pages to the LiveWhale CMS, which is produced by White Whale Web Services. At that time, the library was one of only a few campus not to move into the CMS, but remain with static HTML web pages. While we briefly examined a couple of other CMS', the opportunity integration with the rest of the SU website, along with it's ease of use, made LiveWhale an easy choice.

3.    Did you require or undergo training to prepare for your web design work?

Jesse:   I received some training from our university webmaster, but in general LiveWhale was easy to figure out, and their support site is a great resource.

4.  Did you have a team working with you on the website, or did you mostly do it on your own?

Jesse:   I led a team of 4 that determined the general layout, navigation, and content for the site. When we made it to the wireframe stage, we hired a freelance web designer to do the visual design and coding for our site templates. We worked with him to make some tweaks to our design, while retaining our original vision for the site. When our templates were complete, I created all of the individual pages and loaded the initial content, which is now maintained by the individual departments. 

5.  Have you used other Content Management Systems, and if so, how did it compare to the LiveWhale CMS you are currently utilizing?

Jesse:   We use LibGuides to create library research guides for specific departments, classes and topics. LibGuides is great, because it allows librarians to create pages with no technical expertise, while LiveWhale requires more technical expertise to create pages and edit navigation, but allows for easy editing of content of existing pages.

6.  What goals and objectives did you have in mind when you went with your CMS?




Jesse: 

• Facilitate a redesign of the website. The site was very outdated and needed refreshing.
• Ease updating. The front page of the old site was a very temperamental "grid" of images that was very easy to get off-kilter during editing, and all content edits had to come through the systems librarian, as all pages were required manual HTML editing. The new site is much easier to manage, as only changes to the navigation require manual HTML editing, and after new pages are created, a rich-text editor can be used to manage the primary content areas. 
• Integration with the rest of the university's webpages -- LiveWhale allows for the easy sharing of news items and images across various departements and campus entities  which has made it easier to promote our news to interested parties. 

7.  Are there ways to improve your website or components you would like to add?

Jesse:   Jesse: Live Whale is about to launch a calendar function to integrate event scheduling into news & pages. 

8.  Who provides technical support for you and your website? 

Jesse:   Either our university webmaster or ITS support group, depending on the issue/question.

9.  Please include any additional information you would like to share about your experience with the website's CMS.

Jesse:   LiveWhale has been great. It's a relatively new CMS, and even though our designer hadn't worked in it before it was intuitive enough for him to design for, and when he had questions, their support was really helpful. In addition, it has made keeping pages up-to-date much easier, which has led to our content being kept much fresher than in the previous website. 

Here are the web addresses to LiveWhale and White Whale Web Services in case my links didn't work up in the question text: 

 http://livewhale.com/
http://www.whitewhale.net/

The address to the Southwestern University Library website is:  

http://www.southwestern.edu/library/

Sometimes People Come Through

The other day, I went into the teen area, where a teen girl had plopped herself on a boy's lap. "You need to go ahead and get off of his lap," I told her calmly.  She didn't move. I said it again, a little more firmly. A mom, whose son I had just helped onto the game computer, charged forward and declared, "The lady just told you to get off of his lap!"  This particular mom, not the mom of this teen girl, was rather intimidating in size but completely polite and friendly. The teen girl saw her coming with purpose and jumped right on off that lap.  I told the mom she was my new best friend. I told her son, "Your mom rocks!"  Later the mom and I laughed about it, and I told her someone had asked me if that lady was the girl's mother. I answered, "No, just a caring citizen!"  The mom told me that her mom would have slapped her silly if she had behaved that way in public. I had a similar mother, myself.

Some days people really come through for you!  Ah, life in the library....

The Joomla Nightmare from which I Feared I Would Not Wake

Okay, so that's a little dramatic.  Still, I started out with great intentions. I watched the tutorial--the whole thing.  I took notes.  Then, as I began, I played the tutorial in another tab, stopping and starting so I would do my website step by step.  And STILL I ran into difficulties in the middle, maybe closer to the end.  I have no idea what I did wrong--only that nothing I did fixed it. I stayed up from 7 until midnight trying in vain to fix my errors. I had to go to sleep accomplishing little, EPIC FAIL.  When I woke up, I didn't even want to look at the Joomla website and my sad little website-in-training.  I went to church and prayed over it. Just kidding, I always go to church--had to teach my International class.  ANYWAY, then I went to Karin's (she lives close by) hoping she could throw me a life raft and I could help her in whatever way I could, as well. I did not end up helping her at all (hers looks great), but I did fix some of my problems unintentionally.  I accomplished what the assignment called for, and it looks acceptable.  I want everyone to know that this is not a full-fledged website (of course), and that if I ever did help create one, it would have a lot more information and not practically all borrowed from the National Cued Speech Association's website. 

Just FYI, in case anyone is interested, Cued Speech (as my sad website-who-has-graduated-but-still-forlorn says) is a communication mode for the deaf and hard of hearing.  I began using it with my son, who was born deaf, when he was about 2 1/2 years old. It's based on phonemes so is a visual representation of spoken language--it's been adapted to about 60 spoken languages now. The point of it is (one of the points) that you don't have to learn a whole new language like sign language to begin communicating with your child.  You learn the handshapes and placements and communicate in the language of your home.  Sign language can be learned alongside it.  There's tons of research on it.  I was going to make a research tab (menu category--see, I did learn SOMETHING) but didn't want to keep borrowing from the NCSA.  If anyone wants to find out more, please go to www.cuedspeech.org and/or www.cuedspeech.com.  My son goes to UGA now and is a senior.  He's doing great.

There you have it:  my Joomla saga.  I think if I ever use it again, I'm going to be side-by-side with a real person who has experience.  Maybe I'll help my son's former transliterator get a website going (along with perhaps a website expert).  She is interested in starting a "real" Georgia Cued Speech Association.  Thanks for your time!

Worried about Joomla

I haven't yet begun on assignment 2, but so far it's a pretty big mystery to me.  I've also heard the tutorial is really long--comparable to a feature-length movie!!  Let's hope it will all be pretty straightforward.  This class has been leading me down some highly unfamiliar territory so far, but as long as I can go at a pace I feel comfortable with (and as long as there's a chance I might actually learn something and retain it), things should be okay.  Luckily I read very quickly!

Finding the Best-Fit Wiki

Choosing a Wiki for My Library:

Characteristics

My library system, the Clayton County Library System,  is a public library system that is made up of 6 branches.  The library serves an extremely diverse population of 259,424 people (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010), with Spanish and Vietnamese being spoken by many people who come to the branch libraries.  My library system has a total operating income of $3,523,460 (Public Libraries Survey, 2009).  The goal of the wiki would be to engage the patrons of the library and to allow them to have an active voice in the happenings there.

Library Requirements

The library would require a free wiki, and one that was very easy to contribute to and edit (WYSIWYG).  It would need to be hosted remotely to avoid local server problems, and be linked easily to the library’s web page.  Due to the diversity of the system’s community, a wiki that has at least the capability to be used in different languages would be preferable(at the very least, Spanish).

Wiki Selection

The Wiki Wizard narrowed the choice down for me nicely:  to four possibilities.  They are:  Confluence, MindTouch, Wikispaces and Zoho Wiki.  At first I was impressed with how many languages some of the wikis made available, but the audience some of them were aiming for just didn’t match our library patrons.  None of these seemed to offer Vietnamese, either, which is a language many of our patrons speak in the home.  When looking at the overall picture, Wikispaces is the best fit.  If MindTouch didn’t seem to be focused on users with more of a technical background, it would probably be a great fit for my library system.  Zoho Wiki had so many languages available, but seemed to only be for a smaller group (3 users, 3 workstations).  For at least a jumping off point, Wikispaces seems to be the way for my library to go.