Maryland AskUsNow! Marketing Update

Here's the marketing update as given to the DLDS/statewide marketing group on March 25th:

AskUsNow! celebrated its 6th birthday on March 17 by launching a "Story" campaign to collect stories of customer delight. People can enter their AskUsNow! stories at www.askusnow.info/story. In just a week, they've received some great stories:

• "I am 11 years old and I have a good story. When I was in 5th grade, I first learned about AskUsNow. One time, I got to speak with a librarian all the way from Texas and I live in Maryland! I thought that was a great experience for a 10 year old (at the time). Thanks for all the help from this website. It has been a big help to all kids across America.

• "I had a huge project due in two days and I hadn't even started. I tried going to live homework help, but I waited for half an hour and I never even got a tutor connected to me. I came here and my problem was solved right away. It wasn't a hard question, but it made a huge difference on my project. Thanks so much. I use AskUNow! all the time and I tell all my friends to use it."

By the Numbers

• 273,075 questions asked by Maryland customers from 3/17/2003 to 3/22/2009.
• 9,835 questions asked by Maryland customers so far in 2009
• 38 partner libraries providing 304 hours of live chat per week
• 7 special library partners provide email follow-up and subject expertise for our customers (National Rehabilitation Information Center, National Agricultural Library, Pathfinders for Autism, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Maryland library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Maryland State Law Library, and Charles County Public Law Library)

What's Coming

• A 30 second commercial spot for airing on television and online.
• The famous highlighters will return!
• They may be going eco-friendly for our carry bags this year!
• New CafePress items (with new fun sayings!)

Where we are online

• www.askusnow.info
• MySpace: www.myspace.com/askusnow
• Facebook: www.tinyurl.com/askusnow
• Flickr: www.flickr.com/askusnow
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/askusnow
• Buy swag (at no profit to us): www.cafepress.com/mdaskusnow

The Partners Page is getting an overhaul! And we need your help!

The AskUsNow! Partners Page has served us well as the Staff Support website for many years. But it's time for an overhaul. The Baltimore County Public Library (the grant's fiscal agent, and kind keeper of our cubicles) has given us access to DRUPAL (drupal.org), a robust Content Management System (CMS) on which we will be building our new staff support website.

We envision the new Partners Page to not just be a place to GET information, but a place where you can also SHARE, COMMUNICATE, make CONNECTIONS and build RELATIONSHIPS with each other. But what we think doesn't matter if it doesn't jive with what you guys need.

We need your help, everyone's help, to let us know what they want out of a site like this. PLEASE TAKE OUR BRIEF SURVEY (3 questions!) and tell us what you want the Partners Page to be able to do for you. 

Sky's the limit, tell us everything: 
http://tinyurl.com/chlkp7

The survey will be available until April 10th so get your opinions in now while you're thinking of it!

Headline: AskUsNow! didn't blow up Howard County Libraries!

March 10th was our regularly scheduled Liaison-Meeting-turned-Refresher-Training and we didn't blow up the room! Check it out:


(Click on the photo for a larger view)

Thank you everyone for a successful training!

ugly to beautiful: a remake of signage

Last year, we created a sign to let customers know at the physical building that even though the building might not be open, the websites and AskUsNow! are always available online. Today it underwent a redesign.

The Old Sign

The language, "the building may be closed..." implied that the building is CURRENTLY closed! And i'm pretty sure these signs, once put up, remained up.

The design also bugged me with all it's white space, even when the library URL was in place.

Inspired by Aaron Schmidt's "Beautiful > Ugly" post about signage design i sat down with paper and pencil and a few hours later had a gorgeous new sign.

The New Sign

The new simple design informed the simple language, which was cut down to "we're always open online." No need to mention or imply that the building closes, we just want to promote the website(s). Plus, this time around, we're adding each library URL for you.

I'm so very proud of this new sign and i hope that you guys love it as much as i do.

It really is amazing what good design can for you. Just looking at the sign makes me feel good! Infinite possibilities good! And isn't that what the library is all about?

Signs will be printed and coming your way soon! Email Julie if you haven't already requested your copies. Plan for one copy per outside door per building for your institution.

Exciting week at DrupalCon DC 2009

DrupalCon DC

March 4-7, 2009
Washington Convention Center

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This was one of those “intense learning environment” conferences. I went to DrupalCon to learn about the software from the ground floor, and ended up learning a great deal of unexpected information.

There were 1400 attendees (up from 40 eight years ago), and over 100 workshops and sessions. My Baltimore County Public Library colleague, Jason, and I attended from the same office but with different web projects. While his involves the complexities of a large library’s website, I’m completely satisfied to be working with the Maryland AskUsNow’s Statewide Project Coordinator, Julie Strange, to move our current “Partners Page” site from its current foundation (shaky as it sometimes seems) into Drupal. Our site has twelve main areas, plus the home page. Julie’s previous work to incorporate widgets and to get all updated information uploaded via shortcuts set a tone for this next step.

I looked at DrupalCon as an immersion prior to the event (here is a link to the list of sessions), and while it was like this it was also a lot like a graduate school course condensed into a very small amount of time. The organization of the sessions made it possible for a newbie like me to target “how to start” and “where to go from there,” types of sessions.

I also picked up on three other very important things:

1. No conference is a conference without a certain amount of networking. This was accomplished at DrupalCon as well, including the Birds of a Feather meeting with other librarians who are working with, or looking to work with, Drupal. This put me in touch with a place called Drupal.Groups online, which has many libraries involved (you’ll have to have a login to view the libraries and interact with them, but you can access the front area). Unfortunately, I was naïve to the attraction a meeting like this has for vendors, especially free lance web developers and companies who could provide everything we’d need for a price.Nonetheless, it was a good opportunity to at least meet the 20 or so others who are in various stages of “Drupal and library” web development. Some of the topics included how to work with catalog systems and the beginnings of basic planning to design a library site.
   
   
2. Drupal uses applications and modules as ways to build upon a core. For example, if a site wants a calendar, there is a separate module to download and then incorporate into the desired area of a site. I not only gained more of an understanding of which modules may be usable for our site, but also where these modules are at in their own development stages. There are earlier versions of Drupal – the most current is version 6, and version 7 is in the works. However, many of the modules are still in earlier version form.
   
   
3. Finally, and to me just as essential as learning about the software is to fully fathom the organic, lively quality of what “open source” really means. I was amazed at the overlap of mission between the world of librarians and the Drupal community. On a deeper level, I was moved by the commitment to share quality information. This theme presented itself as a cornerstone for the growth of Drupal, the standard of its software and the future of its community (which is its users and developers). Those who use Drupal often tend to shape it in some way, from involvement as a source of support for others, to testing modules and apps, to making new parts of Drupal. Somehow, it works well in this way. I know nothing else like this. Two of DrupalCon’s keynote speakers, the founder Dries Buytaert and Twittering Chris Messina, addressed this aspect of Drupal very well, as well as to bring in some of the future aspects of social net - working. (I divided “net” with “working” to give the indication that I am talking about something more than FaceBook/MySpace. More like, “working with each other on the net” in a fun but productive way.) If you have any interest in social networking, please watch the hour-long recording of “Chris Messina’s address, “Our Identity Online.”
   

I’m not a programmer. In my past, I’ve looked at open source software and dabbled a little in this and that, but found the available software and easy-to-install applications (like widgets) just enough to work well enough for my uses. I have created a few simple websites and worked on design aspects of others. I went into the conference with some trepidation, somewhat like Dorothy entering the Land of Oz, and came out with an excitement to get started! With our community and connections, with some careful project planning, and with plenty of flexibility and testing, I believe Julie and I will find Drupal to be a frontier that offers us just what we need to create a site that offers information, multimedia options, and with ease of design appeal that will encourage frequent use by all Maryland AskUsNow! providers.

Let me know if you would like access to the detailed notes of the daily sessions I attended, provided through Google Docs online. I’ll be happy to link you there. You can also browse through the recordings available through the Internet Archives, “DrupalCon 2009” online at:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=DrupalCon%202009%20AND%20collection%3Aopensource_movies

Here is a shortened (easier) link, which takes you to the same place:

http://tinyurl.com/dh559p

For more about Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal:

http://buytaert.net/

(posted by Cathay Crosby, Operations Assistant, Maryland AskUsNow!)