Mount Holyoke Campus Workshops (listed by date)
Card Sorting A–Z
Saturday, March 22, 2008
12:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Room: Shattuck 203
Cost: $160
Web users will spend an average of 8-10 seconds and 3 clicks on your website looking for what they need before they get frustrated and click away. Whether you are developing a new website or redesigning an existing one, it is imperative to determine a navigational structure and taxonomy which will be intuitive and usable for your user community. Card sorting is a technique used in the Information Architecture field to determine a classification scheme that speaks to your user population. Discover how to use this quick and inexpensive technique to understand how your users think about your website and its content. Learn how to run both an open and a closed card sort, analyze the results, and make recommendations based on your data. This workshop will explore both online and offline card-sorting techniques as well as analysis software. Make sure your information is findable and increase usability by involving your users in the process of designing your website – they will thank you for it!
Faculty: Ellyssa Kroski, Reference Librarian at Columbia University, author of the blog "InfoTangleWeb" and book "Web 2.0 for Librarians and Information Professionals" (2007); ellyssakroski@yahoo.com
Intellectual Freedom: Fundamentals and Current Events
CANCELLED
Sunday, March 30, 2008
1:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Room: Shattuck 203
Cost: $160
The importance of intellectual freedom is a cornerstone of modern librarianship in the US, and yet for many people is only understood as an abstract idea. This workshop will cover the foundations of intellectual freedom in American librarianship and provide concrete examples of how the concept applies to today's library environment.
We will look at the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read Statement, and state library privacy laws as well as legislation which abridges the freedoms of library workers and library users. We will discuss the thorny issues that arise when intellectual freedom principles conflict with local practices and cultures and ways to unpack and address those issues. Social software and its implications for intellectual freedom in libraries will be another facet we will address. Participants will gain an understanding of ALA's work laying down the foundation for intellectual freedom and leave with concrete examples of IF in action in today's libraries.
Faculty: Jessamyn West, Community Technologist and Librarian in Central Vermont, maintains the Librarian.net website; jessamyn@gmail.com
Indicates link will open in a new browser window