The final day started with a wonderful breakfast. (As always, food was an important part of the conference.)
We then retired to the “Gold Room” for the final sessions.
The first session was a panel on converting best practices into results. Each panelist stressed over & over again the need for staff training. Those on the “front line” of patron interaction need to not only know all about Overdrive – the how to’s & the formats – but they need to be comfortable with them. (Don’t forget to get your staff to participate in Training Month in September )
Laura Crowe, Listen NJ’s project manager was the presenter for the second session. She talked about the top 5 new features to improve patron service. (Caveat – no timeline was given for the activation dates.) Here they are:
- A patron wish list where patrons can put in pre-pub titles, place holds, add & delete titles
- SMS text messaging notification (email notification will also still be used)
- The ability to edit email address on current holds (in case your address has changed)
- An “also recommended” suggestion list at the bottom of the page of a title you’re looking at
- Ability for patrons to search by award type.
There was actually a sixth item on the list – a new full text search on the home page; the patron can search by various keyword criteria.
Laura will contact us when these items are up & ready for use.
The final session of the day – and of the conference was Steve Potash’s “Crystal Ball” Report. These are enhancements that the Overdrive staff hope to be able to offer their customers sometime in the future. As Steve stated, he doesn’t have a Powerpoint presentation to accompany his talk because he doesn’t want this to appear in print!
Areas of future development include working in the mobile world. Steve would like to see people being able to download directly to their mobile device, without the “middleman” of the computer.
They are also continuing to work on finalizing their partnership with the new Sony reader.
Overdrive & their partners are looking into ways to insert themselves in the new Web 2.0 with social networking (blogs, wikis, etc.) and by having libraries use these through their Overdrive web site.
And finally they are looking into new business content models: subscription access for items such as current radio programming & popular digital magazines; creating a portal to a library’s online database where the patron would only have to log-in in one place to access Overdrive as well as subscription databases.
I have to say that Digipalooza (and this is the second one I’ve attended) is an excellent example of how a conference should be run. The amount of information given, the general organization of everything (every session ended exactly on time, thanks to Steve – with the exception of the last presentation which ended 1 minute early!) and the time given for socializing an networking were exceptional. But it was a constant schedule and at the end of it all I’m exhausted.
I hope I’ve given you all a taste of what I experienced. I suggest strongly that you try to get your library to send you to the next Digipalooza. It’s well worth the expense (which is really quite reasonable). Oh – and the vendor giveaways are pretty cool – books, mp3 recordings, dvds, etc.
I’d love to hear your comments, thoughts, etc. on any of the subjects presented in these blog entries.
and you haven’t seen the end of me yet. I still have a bunch of photos to upload. Stay tuned for them.
