I attended Computers In Libraries 2009 in Arlington, VA (March 30 - April 1). Highlights of the conference included getting the chance to explore SirsiDynix's Symphony ILS, which we will be upgrading to this year, Mary Ellen Bate's "Super Searcher" presentation on new search websites (see below for a detailed list of recommended websites), attending a session that compared OPAC overlays for ILS's (sidenote: iBistro looked positively clunky in comparison, & I am completely enamoured with Encore by Innovative Interfaces which works with just about any ILS, including Sirsi, and includes an excellent "Did you mean..." feature and Web 2.0 features such as tagging and customer reviews), an, lastly, an excellent session that compared free Content Management Systems for public librarians such as Drupal (which I knew of), and Joomla, ModX, and Plone (which I had not).
Some thoughts inspired by the conference: A library's physical space and web presence are one and the same when it comes to public perception of the value of the institution; a clunky website leads to an unfavorable image of the library, no matter how excellent the services it offers. In the same vein, it amazed me that for many of the "top" public libraries with panels speaking at the conference, all it took was one staff member (usually the webmaster) to propel them to the cutting edge (as an example, see Darien Public Library). Having an innovative webmaster made all the difference. A few other (not so) innovative ideas: could we place links to our online, full-text magazines in their regular OPAC records? Could we reformat our Evance display a la Howard County? Thinking big: could we be in a true consortium with the D.C. metropolitan area that share the same catalog and allows for ease of borrowing between D.C., Virginia, and MD?
Lastly, here are some of the excellent sites mentioned in the "Super Searcher" session with Mary Ellen Bates:
Alltop, an amazing news aggragator by topic (they call it an "online magazine rack")
LexiQuo, which is a search engine that supplies lexical variants
Keotag, which searches Web 2.0 sites
Carrot2, which is a clustering search engine that also shows you how many top results would be found by the major search engines.
The Awesome Highlighter (this is great), which allows you to highlight portions of a web page, then archives the highlighted version of the page so you can send it to someone with your mark-ups intact.
TextRunner, which searches for assertions on "high quality" websites (great for ready reference questions)
If anyone is interested in talking conference talk, you can reach me at Ann.Geht@montgomerycountymd.gov or 240-777-0693.
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