 Hello everyone, my name is Sarelo Belander and I'm the library dean and interim dean for the College of Extended Education and Global Engagement at Polly Humboldt. Welcome and thanks for your interest in the Discovering Humboldt Project and a conversation about how important finding places, resources and services are for prospective students to cultivate a sense of belonging and retention for current students and staff and faculty and to support tourism or simply to see what are cool places near you. The ability to promote and share favorite places helps build community and hopefully by the end of this presentation you too will join us in putting student resources on their map. Who knew I would be cataloging the world using Google Maps and my plan is to share how I got here. So do you remember move in day once all the energy of the move in day and week are over the students settle a question worth asking and often asked by students and prospective students is what's there to do around here. There are many ways to answer this question and as important how to answer this question anytime and anywhere. What we learn by asking questions includes many students find places by word of mouth, which can be very slow at finding places of belonging or favorites. And searching the internet depends on reviews, more than we realized. Surprisingly, we also learned that answering students questions about what's there to do around here, not only help students prospective students but it helps tourists and visitors. Now this project to date has over 16 million views, and I'm happy to report that you have a powerfully free tool to market to students that scales well, and if students help write with views, it includes their authentic voice. Given the population of Humboldt County is 136,000, we can see that the photos and reviews are well used beyond. The discovering Humboldt idea didn't start with Google Maps it started with two paid library scholar interns project that was focused on travel and tourism. Thanks to a donor who's passionate about tourism. Our initial question focused on what do students know about tourism and students new to the area want to know most about the places and what resources and services are available. So it sounds like a reference question and our first step was to listen, or let me paraphrase that use whiteboards and surveys and conversations to learn more. So imagine our surprise when we pose questions on whiteboards and varying the questions and locations, how instrumental it was in gathering responses, the library scholar interns helped identify many student favorites. The library scholar interns one senior wanted to share back and the other a new student with lots of questions to ask about the new location they found themselves in. So how do we approach learning about place matters to our navigation in it, and how that navigation impacts our sense of belonging. Both students found tremendous value in this research. And our original idea was to develop a library website for students. In the spring of 2020, I had two new library scholar interns on the project, one a computer science student who wanted to work with developing a proof of concept app that made area trails and events easily discoverable. The other student wanted to interview area tourists experts as part of their career interest. As you probably know, COVID came along and it changed everything there were shelter in place orders. So like everyone else we pivoted the students completed their work remotely they both did a phenomenal job. And I began thinking about all the favorite places, hundreds of favorite places that students had identified, and especially because I was missing traveling. So I figured we better take photographs of these favorites so thanks to my family, we went around and did fun research during COVID to photograph the favorite places of students. And soon after the question became, what do you do with all these thousands of photographs and the original idea was to create a library guide that would be the best way to reach 5000 students, but what about prospective students. So in learning by trial and error I was adding photos and reviews to Google Maps, what an ideal way to reach students and everyone because Google search leverages Google map reviews in important and interesting ways. And it surprised me to see that in approximately 10 months, the photos I contributed starting in July 15, 2020 received almost 1.5 million views so definitely reaching the area's population and well beyond it. I also hired Annika Slattery as one of the library scholar interns to become a student assistant to provide online workshops on how the community could participate in contributing photos and reviews. Annika's workshops were fantastic and really inviting others to participate in this process of helping everyone find new favorites. Of course, folks who have favorite fishing spots and surf spots did not want to contribute. But it's important to share your favorites and why it matters. In two years of starting this project, the 178 reviews that I wrote and 3400 photos that I contributed some videos some places had already received over 14 million views. It really only takes five minutes or so to write a review and contribute photos on your phone. Something important to note Google Maps provides various ways to view your photos and reviews and see the views. My favorite places, of course, is the library the Helen Everett reading room has over 119,000 views and some of the photographs of Cal Poly Humboldt I contributed 45 of them have reached between 7000 and 113,000 views. So it's a really great way to get the information out to our students. Anyway, I began to learn that various Google Maps services are provided and opportunities to connect with the community. I received periodic emails that tell me about the views and reviews, and the places added. In this case, five months ago I added a review of Six Rivers Brewery, and it was viewed over 350,000 times. This photo has already received over 2.2 million views. In June I received an email about a place I added that already received 400,000 views. It's important to note this wasn't in Google Maps until I added it. Now periodic local guide email shares the various records of the week which shows a photo that reached 70,000 a photo that reached 90,000 and a photo that reached 100,000 views. And of course, sometimes the local guide email includes a response to your reviews by the owners. What a great way to connect community. And it's a very scalable infrastructure that can connect on how people search and how people cultivate their sense of belonging. It's important to note about how Google Search leverages Google Map reviews. To break this down, the next place that you do, the next time you do a place-based Google search, check out the information pane on the right side. Much of this comes from Google Maps data. Google reviews, for example, will show hours, phone and a lot of comments that people have. So please check your, your hours. Those are often contributed by folks who are interested in sharing your hours unless you claim the business. And so a lot of the reviews will say these hours are not correct because our institutions often change based on when they're in semester when they're not in semester. This is also really an interesting way to look at our questions and communities answered by crowdsourcing. So it's fun to see this as a reference service that exists that we may or may not be aware of. But please do check your questions and answers on your, that are attributed to your site because they're very instrumental in actually thinking about how do we get the word out there about us. The surprising data that you might find is this pattern use. It actually detects Google does have information about phones that are in different locations at how long do they stay in those locations. In this case, they are tracking and they have an average of 1.5 hours at the library, according to this data analysis that is provided, and you should check your sites to see how that differs. Now this is not only important to this information window and telling you what people are saying about your resources and services, but it hasn't profound impact in Google search algorithm. Let's talk about that to see how Google search and Google map reviews work. Try a near me search to see how Google search leverages Google Maps. If you're typing whenever you do a search about a place or about a resource or service, and the context of location is important, Google suggests a near me at the end of your search term. And that's to really prompt and leverage Google Maps photos and reviews to discover about the place. First example I'm showing is beaches near me. In Google search the responsibility based on your location. As more folks add terms like beach labels are often generated so these are the labels that I'm talking about, but oftentimes it's the words in the reviews that also surface things in Google search. Same goes if you do the search for dog parks near me or in this case dog parks near Eureka, California, combining searches like this is a powerful tool when looking at your search results. It's also leveraging Google search APIs in different ways by other systems. So the Google search results are using reviews to surface locations to fulfill the search. This says park, but here says dogs. So that's why it's connecting those two. Now cool places near me. Same is true for things like that. If you wanted to find cool places near me they're going to find things that have been attributed with cool in the reviews, or you can actually look at tide pools near me. If you're looking for places. This is an powerful way for those places to be discovered. And it's important to realize that oftentimes reviews are written by a demographic or persona of a person. So what words matter to their lives show up in their reviews and oftentimes that's how they're found. Now, if you're interested in near me searches, if you want to see the trends I encourage you to look at Google trends to look at how popular searches are so the top, the top near me search is food near me. The top, but it really shows how powerful this is being used and what are the attributes food is oftentimes a very important part of this search algorithm using Google Maps. From all this, I think you know that although a picture is worth 1000 words the words we choose matters and often context is the key to searches. So I encourage you to consider writing your reviews with many perspectives, answering questions like what brought you here what surprised you and who you are not by name, but as a demographic or persona I am in my 50s I am a student I am. This is a wonderful place for children because who might enjoy this place. Google even invites you to participate in how to help people who are doing these kinds of searches like battery recycling near me as part of Earth Day Google Maps connected the context of search patterns with the interest in locating community resources. I'm visiting a park and whenever I see ADA parking or accessibility issues I actually photograph them and make them recognizable in a search. So ADA parks near me is easy to eat more easily found. This is a local guide spotlight of Tijal Falsad from India, and she's explaining how accessibility information is part of a process of Google Maps and teaching students with disabilities. The important part of how we identify things to project and an answer that people are searching really does matter and Google has a lot of tips on this and so you can look at many tips on how to actually contribute high quality reviews and photos, and please be aware that there are terms of use for Google Maps. Now, I'm going to show a quick demonstration of writing a review with Google Maps, and we're going to just do a quick version of CNI now if we look at CNI, it's here, and it has no reviews. So now, Krispy Kreme has 992 reviews so I'm going to click on this and say okay here it is, I can suggest an edit I can add a photo or I can write a review. A review can add photos as well. I'm going to put five stars because I know CNI is amazing what they do. And I'm going to paste in something I prepared part of it is from the text on the website. And part of it is, I know you have awesome meetings about higher education, and you focus on cutting edge and research across institutions. So now I'm going to post that, and it becomes part of the reviews that are contributed to Google, and now CNI has a review. So adding a missing place is super easy whenever you see something that's missing here you can right click on it and add a missing place. So there are lots of ways you can contribute things like trailheads or parks, or even a coffee machine in your library. There are all sorts of ways to increase visibility of the resources that students are looking for in your community. Now why it's important is because, while we often take photos of our special places we don't always share them. Sharing incredibly important is when insufficient data impacts search results. And that can happen when the number of reviews in rural or remote locations impacts the discovery and access of resources. In fact, just comparing the parks and Google map reviews between Los Angeles, and our kid to demonstrate that the number of reviews can have a profound impact on discovery. Because we want our students to be able to find resources they need, we now have a way to get that information easily out at the point of need. Recently a colleague shared that when they were looking for a place to put in their new kayak into a lagoon, when they search they saw the photo of a boat launch that I contributed. And that picture was what they needed to choose where to launch from. Oftentimes we don't realize the impact of this, but having contributed thousands of photos now I am starting to hear from folks. Now adding missing places is incredibly important. I was looking for missing places on Google maps in our area I found our cultural centers needed to be added so I met with each and added them in. First it was itep. The Indian tribal and educational personnel program. And it was quickly accepted by Google when I added added this new place and almost seven days later it had 430 cubes. And it can be discovered through a search on our website, but Google optimizes things that are in Google map reviews. Now, adding a place is super easy, and it makes a huge difference. I also wanted to say that here's the search results and here's the itep at this building. I also added the Moja center and the El Centro Center so while these resources are prominent again on our campus on a campus website, how to make them prominent in Google maps and Google search matters, enabling terms like this is a safe space. This is free coffee for students. Now, these are the terms that are also a near me search you can say safe spaces near me and start to find these locations as they get prominently searched and found adding resources in buildings is a great way to highlight or elevate specific resources. So in the library, I added a missing space called library maker space and I added special collections. Both is a way of search engine optimizing how to find these very specific resources. If somebody were to do a maker space near me search, they would find that within the library, there's something called the library maker space. I'd like to share some questions to consider when thinking about leveraging Google map reviews to support students and finding resources and places around your campus. What's missing. What students are looking for and that could be the frequently asked questions that they're already asking various services, making sure that those show up in Google map reviews will really help. Lastly, I'd like to thank you for your time and interest. And please let me know if you have any questions.