Living Larger Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries Eloisa Gomez Borah and Tim Carlson eloisa@library. ucla. edu tcarlson@anderson. ucla. edu UCLA Anderson School of Management University of California, Los Angeles Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

How Software Moves to Libraries Non-Library DBMS Call Center Software Library OPACS Chat Reference Source: Continuity, 00 vol. 9 #3, Autumn 2005 Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

Not The Usual Story Library Non-Library e. Librarian Best Practice VRD 2001 Ask. Me Manager Syllabus 2005 Student Affairs FEMBA e. Librarian 2. 0 Ask. Me Manager e. Librarian EMMI EMBA 2007 2006 2005 2004 2001 2000 AMR Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

How Ask. Me Manager Works http: //www. anderson. ucla. edu/x 16380. xml Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

Functions & Processes • • • User Authentication: Name & Email Auto selects request form Auto-populated Course List Auto-assigns Work Shifts Unified or Shared Workspace Requestor-selected Categories Auto-populated Knowledge Base Recommender System using KB Response & Survey Reminders and Reports Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

Designed for Portability + Scalability • Infrastructure – Perl/UNIX/SQL Server • Database Design – Organization Code – Tables: categories, survey questions, responders • Configuration Table • Page Header and Footer: function calls • Separate Layers: visual, logical, data Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

A Look Under the Hood • Sample URL -www. anderson. ucla. edu/apps/library/elibrarian/ref_asst_initiate. cgi? org_code=Z 6 • Configuration table <use_survey> A 1 1. . Z 5 1 Z 6 0 </use_survey > • Org_code and Config table fetch $org_code=param('org_code'); $system_title = $config_values{'system_title'}->{$org_code}; $use_survey = $config_values{‘use_survey'}->{$org_code}; • Database Query SELECT elib_category_type, category_description FROM $database. . elib_category_types WHERE organization_code= '$org_code‘ Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

Rollouts (Beyond Library) To Date AMR (thesis project) Jul 2006 Student Affairs Oct 2006 EMMI (executive seminars) Oct 2006 Fully Employed MBA (admissions) Jan 2007 Executive MBA (admissions) Feb 2007 Undergrad Accounting Sep 2007 Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

Differences / Motivation • • • Community Building Marketing Requestor History Privacy Issues Ready reference versus research strategies Internal versus external search and questioning Volunteer teams versus paid staff Scheduled staffing versus unscheduled Anonymity versus visibility Anderson strategic initiatives Questions versus categories Survey versus Non-survey Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

Adoption Success Factors • Provided solutions for a problem at hand: – Facing high volume of information requests – Email-based systems subject to junk mail • Improved operations: – Provided metrics and management reports – Enhanced image for their tech-savvy clients • Previous adoption by same management Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

Factors in Non-Adoption • Perceived to be less personal than email • Overhead of adopting a new system and change to current business practices. • Concern about support levels for ‘free’ software • Not fitting business needs Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries

What we would have done different • Learn-from-our-experience • Forks in the Road • Options and Our Decisions – Library Rollout options – Cross discipline rollout options – Anderson Edge decision • Unforeseen Hurdles Living Larger: Taking Your Killer App Beyond Libraries