Digital Communications

Exercise 1: Creating an Issuu account

Issuu helps you communicate by making written documents more engaging. Its also vital for getting people to read PDFs at all. For this exercise youre going
to work in pairs one of you will set up an Issuu account and convert a PDF of this handout to a page-turning Issuu document (making it easier to access the
various links for the rest of the workshop). The account can always be deleted after the session if you decide Issuu is not for you.
Step 1: Creating an Issuu account
First go to www.issuu.com and choose Create new account. Put in some details as prompted, and choose Upload rather than Read when presented with
this screen:

Choose the FREE option when the different packages are offered you do not need to pay to use Issuu
for the kinds of purposes we need it for. Once youve completed a publishers profile (where youd put
in the name and website of your library or you can skip this step for now) youll have a chance to select
a file to convert to Issuu.
In order to do this, youll first need to locate the PDF.
Step 2: Converting the PDF to Issuu
Back on Issuu, press Select a file to get started (or Upload, and then Select a file to get started) and
navigate to the PDF. On your Desktops should be a folder called UKeIG. Open this, and inside will be a
file called Digital Marketing Toolkit hand-out. Double click on the file, and it will begin to convert it,

which takes a couple of minutes.

A screen will eventually appear giving you the opportunity to name and describe your document. You dont need to worry about this now but it will be
important if you come to use Issuu with your Library. Click Publish then Open Document. Your page-turning version of the handout should now appear on
screen.

Exercise 2: Checking Foursquare

Foursquare used to be about check-ins but thats no longer the case. Now its all about local search FourSquare knows where you are, so it can provide you
with contextual information (a bit like Yelp or Trip Advisor) on your phone. If FourSquare users are using your library it may already be on the site even if you
havent put it there generally speaking its a risky business to have a social media profile associated with your organisation that you have no influence over,
hence this exercise in finding whether or not the library is already listed. If it is, then there are things you can do later to help FourSquare users get better
information about your library and if youre a public library, its worth making sure the kinds of things people commonly need (the most obvious example
being free wifi are listed on your location, to draw new visitors in.
Go to www.foursquare.com and search for your library. The search function on FourSquare is fairly annoying in my experience it may be easier to just
search for the word library and put in the name of your town or area, rather than typing in the name of your actual library.

Assuming you find your library, at some point soon (not as part of todays session!) sign up to FourSquare and add to the information already provided by
putting in some genuinely useful advice in the Tips section. It may also be worth trying to claim your location when you get back to your desks tomorrow
be warned though, while this has been easy for some libraries, others have found FourSquare unresponsive and the process frustrating. To claim an existing
location the link you need is: http://business.foursquare.com/claim. To register a new location as yours (i.e add your library to foursquare) the link is:
https://foursquare.com/add-place . Once youve claimed a location, you can edit the information provided (for example adding in URLs, Twitter profiles,
changing the description etc) and you have more control over which tips and photographs appear.

Exercise 3: Finding real-world uses for beacons, augmented reality, or QR Codes

The point of this is to shift from abstract discussion to potential real-world applications of the various geolocation technologies. Were doing to post any ideas
you have onto a Padlet wall (a sort of virtual notice board) so you can see everyones ideas in one place and potentially learn from them. If you see no use for
QR Codes, Beacons, Augmented Reality etc in your library, thats absolutely fine dont feel like you have to find a reason to use them!
To post to the Padlet wall, go to http://padlet.com/ned/ukeig (case sensitive). Double click to add a note with your idea.

Exercise 4: Understanding responsive design

The difference between Adaptive Design and Responsive Design in websites can be confusing going to http://finecitizens.com/defineResponsive/ and
choosing the different icons makes it straightforward to understand. The site demonstrates Responsive Design, and will rearrange the contents of the website
according to the size of the screen you choose this is the most useful option from the users point of view (no information is lost) and the easiest to
maintain from the providers point of view (only one set of code, which works in different ways for different screen sizes). Adaptive design involves a separate
version of the site designed for mobiles if you have any sway at your organisation in web matters, its worth trying to get a Responsive, rather than
Adaptive, version of your website in the long term.
For a nice example of Responsive Design visit http://hellofisher.com/ - watch his face as you resize your browser window to make it smaller

Exercise 5: Video examples

For this exercise were returning to our Padlet wall at http://padlet.com/ned/ukeig (case sensitive). Post examples to
the wall of library videos either good ones, or bad ones, for us to watch.
To post a video double click on the wall (below all the earlier notes), and click the little chain link icon copy and paste
in a YouTube or Vimeo video link, which will then embed the video on the board.

Exercise 6: Checking if Pinterest is relevant for your Library

Pinterest is the fastest growing social network. The point of this exercise is to see
if there is evidence of an existing audience for your project, service or
department. If there is, it may be worth setting up your own account to tap into
this.
Go to http://www.pinterest.com/all/ (note the all part of the URL just going
to pinterest.com doesnt allow you to search) and type some search terms into
the box, e.g. rare books, maps, technology, libraries, etc.
To use Pinterest completely safely you need to either own the copyright of the
material you are pinning, or only pin material which is copyright free originally or
whose copyright has expired. If anything related to your service / department /
project fits might fit the bill, make a note of it here:

Bonus Exercise: Creating a timeline with Storify

This is a bonus exercise to do if theres time, and youve looked at Pinterest and want to move on.
Ultimately the goal is to use this tool to document positive and negative feedback for your service, project or department, but for now you can document any
theme you like. An example of a feedback Storify can be seen at http://storify.com/theREALwikiman/an-example-of-using-storify-to-document-positive-f.

Go to www.storify.com. Click Log-in in the top right hand corner of the screen choose Sign in with Twitter if you have a Twitter account, or click Join
now! to create a new profile if you dont.
Once youve created a profile, youre going to create a short Storify story. Click Create story.
Storify can bring in social media output from all sorts of platforms but for now were going to focus on Twitter; choose the Twitter logo to search only
that platform:

If you have a Twitter account of your own, put the username into the search box, and choose your Favourites. The tweets you have favourited will
now appear down the right-hand-side of the screen. (If youve never favourited anything, just keep it on User instead of Favorites.)
You can now simply drag and drop any tweets you want to into the timeline that constitutes the main part of the screen, then give your Storify a
headline and description, and press Publish. Keep in mind its easy not just to share Storifies by giving people the link, but to embed your story in a
blog or other website.

Contact details
The Prezi we used today is available at http://bit.ly/ukeig2 (case sensitive). Please feel free to share it with colleagues within your organisation.
Got any follow up questions? ned.potter@york.ac.uk or @ned_potter on Twitter.
Theres loads more guides to social media and emerging technologies at www.ned-potter.com too. Good luck!

Full list of online tools and sites mentioned in the session

Online Publishing: www.issuu.com and www.scribd.com for making PDFs into browse-able documents; www.flickr.com/search, www.morguefile.com and
www.pixabay.com for useful images you can legally use; and www.fontsquirrel.com for non-standard fonts.
QR Codes: http://snap.vu to create QR Codes with built in statistics tracking.
Geolocation: www.foursquare.com to find and claim your location (see the Bodleians nicely done example at https://foursquare.com/v/bodleianlibrary/4b7aae05f964a520ed362fe3); www.estimote.com for commercially available beacons and software; www.aurasma.com/ for Augmented Reality
software.
Mobile and Apps: http://finecitizens.com/defineResponsive/ to see Responsive Design in action.
Video: www.youtube.com/user/YorkInformation for the Library and IT YouTube Channel at the University of York; www.videoscribe.co for the hand-drawing
animation programme; http://getvoice.adobe.com/ for Adobe Voice, the slides / video hybrid; www.xtranormal.com for the animation tool;
www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html for Camtasia, the paid for Screen-Capture tool; http://tinytake.com/ for a free alternative; www.vimeo.com for another
place to host videos apart from www.youtube.com.
Blogs: http://visual.ly/ to turn your Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/) into an infographic emailed to you on a weekly basis; www.tumblr.com for
a short-form blogging alternative to the traditional www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com longer format blogs - see
http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/ for the British Librarys Mechanical Curator tumblr.
Twitter: http://tweetstats.com to analyse yours (or anyone elses) tweets be warned, this the least reliable site ever and only works about one time in ten
that Ive tried it! https://analytics.twitter.com/ for detailed analysis of your tweets and followers (its not listed in the presentation but see also
www.tweriod.com which shows you exactly when your followers are most online, allowing you to tweet important things to the biggest possible audience);
www.storify.com to capture social media reaction and feedback to library activities.
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/all/ to search Pinterest without signing up (although it will keep pestering you to do so, you can ignore it and reset the screen).