IUG Conference - Innovations from the Library World

At the recent IUG Conference in Washington D.C. the eLGAR team picked up some exciting tidbits of innovation and initiative happening in libraries around the world. Here is a summary of the best.

New Kids Catalogue – Mid-Hudson Library Consortium
Mid-Hudson a large consortium in New York State, has developed a unique kids' catalogue designed for children to navigate using a highly graphic presentation and results display.

This Kids' Catalogue was the first place winner in the WebPac category of the Be Innovative Awards. Check it out on http://gigcat.midhudson.org:90/search~S2. Note: some library firewalls block this url but it is well worth taking a look at from your home computer.

Wiki Site for Staff Competencies
West Palm Beach a Florida based local library, has produced a wiki-based skills programme for staff.

The wiki provides training materials and tracks progress on core Millennium competencies. It has been so successful that there are expansion plans to cover other areas of library technology use.

Events Calendar using Patron API
Hong Kong Baptist University has come up with a clever way of using the Innovative Patron API to enable notification of due dates and reserve pickups etc to be sent direct to patron's web calendars or Outlook style diaries. They can also be advised of library events or programmes and register online without logging in to the library website. eLGAR currently uses the Patron API for Pay online.

American libraries particularly public, seem to be very programme focussed. There are a few quite interesting developments in proactive event marketing. Innovative have a Programme Registration module and there are a few other options using various Web 2.0 features like RSS and Atom feeds to alert customers to what’s on at their library.

Innovative have made several enhancements to its Programme Registration module making it one option for eLGAR however several other third party products also exist.

Facebook Library Search Application
Ryerson in Toronto, Canada is one of the larger Millennium universities. Facebook is absolutely pervasive in the U.S. university world as it was originally created by students to keep track of friends. On the basis of going where your audience already is, many libraries have catalogue search functions on Facebook but Ryerson has extended their functionality to render the results within Facebook rather than linking out to the OPAC in separate browser windows.