Hi all, this is yet another conference report from me, my 3rd and last international conference for 2012. This time around, I had the opportunity to attend and speak at Internet Librarian International 2012 in London. I was very excited to attend because I knew from looking at the tweets and slides coming out from the past editions, this was my type of conference & I wasn't disappointed.

This is probably the final part of my mammoth series of posts analysing Summon libraries. To recap. In June, I used Libwebcats to extract about 200+ libraries that self-identified to be using Summon. Then I analysed in the following blog posts 1) How they were branding the service 2) How they were designing the Summon box and also how many were using single box vs multi-tab/box or no box at all.

This is part II of How are libraries designing their search boxes?  A quick recap, in June 2012, I used  Library Technology Guides Libwebcats , did an advanced search (free registration needed) for libraries  using Summon and went to their websites to study various characteristics including how they brand the Summon Service and how they designed their search boxes.

I am sure you have seen presentation slides done in the libraryland by speakers that are often stunning in simplicity. You know the type - one picture as the background with at most 2 lines of text. Of course, anyone of us could mimic this but for 2 things 1) It takes work and time to look up for suitable pictures. create text boxes to enter text etc 2) Our natural inclination is to fill up the slides with lots of words.

I am hardly a expert on usability or user experience but over time of looking at usage logs and talking to users, observing users by walking around and helping I have started to realise a couple of things. Here's one.

So we librarians are failing (or are we? See Walt Crawford's analysis of public library closures in US). Amazon is eating our lunches. Google is where people go. Surely we must be doing something wrong? Below are some of the critiques about how we librarians do things that perhaps deserve our consideration.

Brian Matthew's A white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism [pdf] is probably one of the most thought provoking pieces on academic librarianship I have read this year so far.

If you have any familiarity with blogging you will know for some unknown reason "list posts" tend to be more successful at grabbing attention.  An example of a "list post" is "10 reasons why librarians are awesome" or "5 ways to promote your library workshop". Some of you who read humor sites like cracked.com (e.g. 16 Unseen Jobs That Must Exist in Movie Universes)  or tech blogs like Mashable will also recognise the style.

It's finally here. FourSquare launches Local Updates from businesses . "Foursquare Local Updates let merchants send text, photos, and specials to customers who have either checked into a business several times or liked it on Foursquare" (more) Here's how it looks like.

With the rise of web scale discovery services like Summon, Ebsco Discovery Service, WorldCat Local and Primo Central, librarians have began to assess how to teach searching and Information literacy differently. As I blog this there is a Information Literacy & Summon workshop going on at Sheffield Hallam University.

I am proud and honoured to receive the 2012 Salem Press Library Blog Award - Best Academic Library Blog! Time flies and more than three years have passed since I decided to first blog on a whim.