Interesting statistical information sent in by Marisa Ramirez, Kennedy Library Digital Repository Librarian:
An interesting study from ECAR (Educause Center for Applied Research) was released on Oct. 22. “The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009.”The key findings are quite interesting. Here are a few of them.
79% of freshmen own a laptop one year old or newer.
2/3 of all students report owning a desktop or laptop 2years old or newer.
Almost 95% of students use the library website weekly.
Over 90% students use SNS.Almost 90% students use text messaging.
Use of instant messaging is down to 74% of students.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about online library catalogs and the uncomfortable place libraries find themselves: stuck between traditional search models and user expectations. To state the obvious: users expect the ability to search by keyword and get the most relevant data. Libraries can provide the most relevant data, but only if the users know how to interact with their cumbersome interfaces. Outcome? Quandary. The article will bring you up-to-speed on library catalog challenges and the comment discussion will provide insight into the vast, differing opinions within the library world.
This week I read that Seimens “bought the background” of the Huffington Post. Meaning that if you clicked outside of the main content area (in other words to the far left, far right, top or bottom) of the site, you were directed to a Seimens ad.
I went to HuffPost and could not find this in action — it appeared that their background was neutral and not linking to anything.
A day later I open Pandora for music while I work. Music played without interruption for 30 to 60 minutes, then, between songs, a voice came on to tell me that Pandora streaming is being brought to me by Pepto Bismol. What the heck? I make the Pandora screen active and sure enough, Pandora had been swathed in pink goo.
So, is this the face of the future of web advertising? And can we hope for a little less pink?
And she was right. It is of interest. Libraries are going through a metamorphosis right now, from easy-to-grok changes like yes — you can eat and drink at the library to hard-to-fathom scenarios such as removing books. This article is a little misleading in that it seems as if they are taking literature and scholarly work out of the picture, but they’re not. They’re offering it in a different format. Whether or not it will work, only time will tell. But you can bank on the face of libraries today being very different from that of the future.Thanks for the link Rachel.
I hope I’m not spoiling anything when I share that I often turn to photographs for color palette inspiration. Color is one of the hardest parts of design for me; there are so many colors! How to choose? How to narrow it down? Often, if I’m working on something that includes a photograph, I will look for colors that appear in the photograph to craft the palette.
When this was just a lowly comp and I was trying to determine the color scheme, I turned to the photograph of the magnolia tree that was getting front-and-center attention. (The tree, by the way, is in the library’s atrium and blooms February through March). I grabbed neutral colors from the cement and an orange-ish glow from the interior lights. The palette was understated and I hoped academic.I bring up this story to illustrate the coolness (and usefulness) of a new online tool, ColorSuckr.
ColorSuckr pulls (okay, sucks) out colors from any online .jpg you send its way (key point: you must send it the actual image URL, not just the page it is on). It then displays the colors, their RGB and hexidecimal values (with a nice nod to web color safe colors as an option). In addition, you can then choose any of the colors to see color palettes for that color specifically. If you click on a color within that new color palette you are taken to the long-time color-afficionado web site, colourlovers.com for more hex values and color options. Very cool. Very handy. Very clever.
Examples: Screenshots of the results for the magnolia photo
Click an image to see it larger
A better look at the color values
From ColorSuckr, I chose to view the photos which were most like the colors we use on the web site. You can see the hex values; I clicked “Show” to get the color schemes, which are to the right in the graphic.
Think Vitamin nicely outlines the Ten Commandments for the Chosen Web Designer.
Know these people. Study them. Repeat them outloud. Put them on sticky notes and then affix them to your bathroom mirror. Bonus points if you tattoo them to the underbelly of your forearm.
I was going to highlight the few that I thought stood above the rest, but couldn’t because each of these is golden. Every one of them.
(Okay, okay: visual hierarchy. There. You get one. And also, know thy user.)
(And pay attention to patterns; stay consistent; speak their language; keep it simple.) (Whoops.)
By now you have probably seen this funny squirrel who jumped into this couple’s photo (camera on timer) during their vacation. Funny how things work out. That same squirrel either traveled quickly to the Central Coast or texted his little squirrely friends on campus and they got busy with the library web cam/web site.
This is a very simple trick I use quite a lot. When I need to keep track of smaller pieces of paper, I glue a small envelope to the inside of the project’s file folder. Perfect for business cards and those great ideas that get scribbled onto cocktail napkins.
This little snapshot (only 1/6th of the image) doesn’t even come close to showing you how awesome this graph is. Starting with a comparison between Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Earth, you can easily grasp the difference in sizes between these planets. And then it moves on, Earth to Jupiter. Jupiter to the Sun. The Sun to Sirius (above). All the way to Canis Majoris. Prepare to have your mind blown.
Rachel Henry, fellow campus web geek (she’s Academics here at Poly) sent me the following email:
But maybe you can judge the graphic designer. Eight book-cover designers discuss the redesign process in Print Magazine’s article 
This is a very simple trick I use quite a lot. When I need to keep track of smaller pieces of paper, I glue a small envelope to the inside of the project’s file folder. Perfect for business cards and those great ideas that get scribbled onto cocktail napkins.
