WiLSWorld 2014 Conference Program

Monday, July 28th

9:00 am-5:00 pm Preconference

How to Hack It: An Intro to Coding With the WorldCat Search API

At the Madison Public Library – Central Library, Third Floor Community Room

Join Steve Meyer from the OCLC Developer Network for a beginner-level session that will take you from programming concepts to hackathon participant in a single day. We’ll spend the first part of the day walking through the building blocks of coding a simple search interface for the WorldCat Search API. In the afternoon, we’ll help you use that knowledge to add more functionality to that interface, creating your own working search application.

This class will assume you have a working familiarity with HTML, simple CSS and XML. We will build on this basic knowledge by adding computer programming – in this case, PHP – to your toolbox. A basic understanding of programming concepts like variables, conditional logic and looping through data structures will help you keep up, but no coding experience is required. If that sounds like you (or a state you aspire to!), come spend the day with us and turn working knowledge into a working application.

Tuesday, July 29th

8:30-9:00       Registration and Coffee

9:00-9:15        Welcome and Introductions

9:15-10:15         Keynote Address with  Daniel W. Rasmus

Libraries sit at the convergence of change in technology, consumer behavior, learning and content. Change is not a bad thing, but it is something that needs to be navigated rather than ignored. We are going to talk about how to challenge your assumptions, put a name on uncertainties and use stories about the future to reimagine the stale, innovate based on new capabilities, protect the precious and let go of what just can’t be saved. Although external forces greatly influence the current and future context, we co-create the local environment through the choices we make. At the end of today’s presentation you will have better ammunition and better tools for making future-facing decisions.

10:30-11:30     Concurrent Sessions

Q&A with Daniel W. Rasmus

New Project Workshop:  A Place to Start Working on Your Good Ideas

Dan Reed, Managing Director, American Family Ventures
Ellen Jacks, Grants Librarian, UW-Madison Memorial Library
Paula Kiely, Director, Milwaukee Public Library

Have a new idea you want to get off the ground? Have an old idea that didn’t go as far as you wanted? Finding it difficult to move forward? This discussion will help you start thinking about beginning (or restarting) your project by providing some background and examples of Lean Startup practices and meaningful community involvement. We’ll also discuss transition from making a project plan to finding funding for your project. Our presenters will “workshop” a sample project to illustrate how their methods can be put into practice.

When You Love Something, Set It Free: Let Your Catalog Get Lost Among the Web of Data

Steve Meyer, Technical Platform Project Manager, OCLC

At OCLC we have been geeking out over the opportunities to model bibliographic information as Linked Data. We believe that the Linked Web of Data provides new opportunities to deliver new experiences to information seekers discovering library materials, so much so that we have based our new discovery API around the data modeling and language of the semantic web.

We will demonstrate how working with Linked Data in a discovery context will enable libraries to deliver new services through their systems, including:

• Expanding the information that can be incorporated into a discovery interface beyond cataloged information
• Embedding information to be understood by Search engines through the use of data readymade for semantic web description

Developers familiar with RDF data and serializations may be skeptical that the academic background for semantic web serializations like RDF/XML would make a good candidate for a highly usable, modern API. So were we. We’ll provide an overview of working with RDF data in a real-world context and the promising experiments we have uncovered while working with our API ourselves.

11:45-1:15           Member Lunch and Collaboration Auction

1:30-2:15            Exhibitor Showcase

This is our first WiLSWorld with an Exhibitor Showcase and we are excited to welcome the following partners to our event!

2:30-3:30          Concurrent Sessions

Wanna Be Friends and Maybe Do Some Cool Stuff?

Stef Morrill, Director, WiLS

To make any idea a reality, you need a plan. This session will give you the opportunity to talk with your colleagues about those great ideas that you have, how you might plan to make those projects a reality, and perhaps find partners for your endeavors.  You can discuss the work you’re doing and new projects you’re contemplating, meet others who might have experience in that area or in project planning, and perhaps find people who want to collaborate with you.   And we’ll be able to feed your project ideas into our matchmaking “collaboration auction” that will be available throughout the conference to help you connect with others interested in your project.

Discovery Layers – Collaboration and Implementation

Terri Muraski, Information Systems Librarian and Associate Professor, UW-Stevens Point
Kelly Kroes, WISPALS Consortium Coordinator, Gateway Technical College

Get an inside look at the lessons learned implementing the Primo resource discovery layer in the WISPALS and UW System library consortia.  We’ll share our success stories and frustrations with collaboration, the communication vehicles that worked well and give pointers on how to survive with way too much email!

Spreading the Word: Novel Marketing For Your Library and Services

Tina Babler, Marketing Library Assistant, Appleton Public Library
Angela Meyers, Public Relations & Special Needs Librarian, Waukesha County Federated Library System
Mellanie Mercer, Library Automation Coordinator, Waukesha County Federated Library System

Library patrons learn about library events in many different ways – web site announcements, facebook posts, text alerts, and through the catalog. Did you know the majority of web site users visit your library’s web site just to get to the catalog? How maddening! That is why Waukesha County Federated Library System is meeting the patrons where they are at – not where we want them to be. Come learn how marketing your programs and services directly in the catalog can make your patrons more aware of your library’s diverse offerings.

Libraries are also experimenting with novel and interesting ways to engage the community through branding. Tina Babler from Appleton Public Library shares the basics of how to rebrand your library, creative strategies to use along the way and why it’s important to keep your brand up-to-date.

3:45-4:45           Concurrent Sessions

Learning from Failure:  A Support Group

Andrea Coffin, Community Liaison / Service Specialist, WiLS

Innovation involves risk, and we have all tried new things that didn’t work, some spectacularly.  Come to share and listen to how we cope and grow from our failures in this support group for innovators.  How do you recognize what didn’t work?  How do you know when to improve the project and try again or when to scrap it?  Who determines success?  How do we stay positive about our work despite the setbacks?

Digital Humanities – How Libraries Can Be Involved

Jon McKenzie, Director, DesignLab
Kelly Hiser, Digital Humanities Fellow, UW-Madison

Digital humanities projects abound, and libraries are a great environment to foster and support them.  This program will help you understand how and when libraries can be involved in the digital humanities by highlighting initiatives from the UW-Madison and the Madison Public Library.

Innovative Ways to Use Library Space

Bill Robison, Architect and Partner, Engberg Anderson
Kristin Vogel, Director, Mulva Library at St. Norbert College
Kim Boldt, Systems Librarian, St. Norbert College
Julie Gores, Library Director, Libraries & Academic Support Services, Madison College
Donna Marconnet, Technology Librarian, Madison College

Technology and a host of social and academic forces are changing the ways in which patrons use our libraries.  Architects and librarians are reconsidering the way our buildings are designed to accommodate and encourage meaningful use of the library space.  Come to listen to how some members of our community are embracing these changes and rethinking their spaces.

5:00-6:00          Cocktail Hour at Pyle Center

Wednesday, July 30th

8:30-9:00          Sign-in and Coffee

9:00-10:15         Keynote Panel – Big Changes, Big Rewards

Greg Mickells, Director, Madison Public Library
Lisa Viezbicke, Director, Morse Library, Beloit College
Patrick Wilkinson, Director, Forrest R. Polk Library, UW-Oshkosh

Change offers us a valuable opportunity to improve, and the risks we take can lead to meaningful rewards.  This keynote panel will share their stories and insights about how they have chosen to meet the challenges of large scale change and grow from them.  Greg Mickells, Director of Madison Public Library; Lisa Viezbicke, Director of the Morse Library at Beloit College; and Pat Wilkinson, Director of the Forrest R. Polk Library at UW-Oshkosh will address how they feel these big changes have brought big rewards to their libraries and communities.

10:30-11:15        Concurrent Sessions

Q&A with Keynote Panel

Evaluation and Assessment of Services

Maccabee Levine, Head of Library Technology Services, Polk Library, UW-Oshkosh
Barbara Brattin, Director, Kenosha Public Library
David Ziembiec,Director of Business Solutions + Data Analytics, Cengage Learning

Assessment and evaluation are key to our library success and progress. This panel shares their insights on how to go about the business of understanding your service performance and community needs.

Kenosha Public Library participated this year in the free Library Impact Survey to gauge customer interaction with library technology and found the real wealth of information came through participant comments. Barb will share what Kenosha learned directly and passively through participation.

Maccabee will discuss how UW Oshkosh conducted its recent LibQUAL+ survey, from participant recruiting through results analysis, including some changes from previous years that helped or hurt the process.

Libraries, big or small, can find value in embracing a data-driven approach to evaluation to better understand the communities they serve and accomplish library goals. David will discuss the new Analytics on Demand service and how it’s helping libraries understand patrons, strategic planning, programming, and performance measurement.

Kitchen Library:  Fostering Creativity

Laura Damon-Moore, Cofounder/Editor, Library as Incubator Project; Assistant Director, Eager Free Public Library
Erinn Batykefer, Cofounder/Editor, Library as Incubator Project; Assistant Librarian, Alicia Ashman branch, Madison Public Library
Tana Elias, Digital Services & Marketing Manager, Madison Public Library

With makerspaces and media labs and recording studios, the library is quickly and successfully moving from a repository of information to a creator of it.  Our presenters will share the ways that their libraries are advocates for creativity, connecting the library and its resources to artists and makers of all sorts.

11:30-12:15        Technology Mixer

12:30                Birds of a Feather Lunch at Memorial Union