Subscribe to this blog
Archive for October, 2006
« Previous EntriesThe Joy of Screencasting
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006Ever since I first started screencasting almost two years ago, I’ve been really surprised how few people are talking about how cool it is. It can be so hard to teach students at a distance how to use databases, and screencasting is the only tool that allows you to concretely demonstrate how they work. Add [...]
Bloglines Issues
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006Jennifer Macaulay mentioned today (at least I think it was today — though by the time you see it, it could be three days from now) that she’s noticed her feed isn’t updating very frequently in Bloglines:
This is highly frustrating. But ultimately, I know I wrote a post, so I didn’t worry about it too [...]
Feed2JS – Always a hitch
Sunday, October 29th, 2006Ken Varnum, of RSS4LIB, and I were both speaking at the Dartmouth Biomedical Library’s Fall Conference on Friday, and we were talking about Feed2JS (which I talked about with Paul Pival at IL2006). He told me about an experience he’d had with sploggers using his Feed2JS installation (and bandwidth) to do their dirty work. This [...]
IL 2006 Wrapup
Saturday, October 28th, 2006Wow! What an amazing conference! I can honestly say that I didn’t go to a single bad/boring/irrelevant talk and, although I was sick and sidelined on Day 3, I got more out of this conference than any I’ve been to in the past.
I didn’t go to a lot of the social software talks because [...]
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries October Conference – Wrapup
Friday, October 27th, 2006October Conference Wrap-up – Roy Tennant
Roy discusses the salient points from each talk.
Wikis: Creating Collaboration in Libraries
Wikis are a low-threshold way to collaborate. Doesn’t need to be open to everyone to change. Search capability. Requires trust among a community (though it is easy to rollback changes). Many potential uses. Don’t even have to install software. [...]
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries October Conference – Mystery Topic
Friday, October 27th, 2006Staying Informed by Bill Garrity, Dartmouth University
“Being geeky doesn’t make us losers.”
We all have personal requirements for how we get information. Bill doesn’t want to have to go somewhere to find info. He wants it pushed to it.
He designs his browser environment to keep up. He has a tabbed browser and multiple home pages. [...]
Dartmouth Conference – Emerging Mobile Technologies for Libraries
Friday, October 27th, 2006by Gabriel Rios, University of Alabama, Birmingham
Mobile devices are another way to get content into the hands of our patrons.
Types of mobile devices – PDAs/Smart Phones, Cell phones, ipods, MP3 players, tablet PCs
PDAs are often required in nursing and medical school programs. More and more doctors are starting to use the Blackberry (used for [...]
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries October Conference – Podcasting Panel
Friday, October 27th, 2006Our Content, Their Device: Three Uses of the iPod – Sarah G. Wenzel, Columbia University
The librarians at Columbia University have developed library content that can be used on an iPod.
They created a call number guide (visual) that can be downloaded on an iPod. They made downloadable map photos of the stacks available. To explain [...]
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries October Conference – RSS Panel
Friday, October 27th, 2006Using RSS to Promote Scholarly Publications – Ken Varnum, Tufts University
RSS stands for real simple syndication. It’s an xml-based data format for syndicating content. Way to send a title, URL and abstract to aggregators, websites, etc.
How do you let the world know that your feed is updated? By pinging aggregators or by including recent headlines [...]
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries October Conference – Keynote
Friday, October 27th, 2006I just got home last night from California around 8:30 PM and am now, at what was 6:10 am for me yesterday, sitting at Dartmouth at a terrific conference they give every year. This year’s theme is Cool Tools and New Technologies and I’m thrilled to be part of a terrific roster of speakers today [...]
IL2006 Day 2: Delivering Individualized Library Content: Portals and the Future of Library Web Sites.
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006Tom Ipri, La Salle University
At Computers in Libraries in March, I had told Tom how excited I was about going to his talk and then I promptly went and missed it by having a way too long lunch. D’oh! So I gave him my solemn word that I would come and see him give his [...]
IL2006 Day 2: Institutional Repository Basics: From Soup to Nuts
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006Roy Tennant, University of California
While I was very interested in all of the talks in the social computing track today, I really wanted to expand my knowledge of certain topics that I know very little about. I knew that Roy would be likely to give a very practical nuts-and-bolts introduction to developing institutional repositories and [...]
IL 2006 Day 1: Federated Search: State of the Art
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006Jeff Wisnewski and Frank Cervone
I haven’t really looked much at federated search tools since my post on using MetaLib well over a year ago. So I was very interested to hear Jeff and Frank talk about the recent developments in federated search technology and how many federated search companies are partnering with search companies outside [...]
Internet Librarian Day 1: The Basics of Web-Based Experience Planning
Monday, October 23rd, 2006by David King, newly of the Topeka and Shawnee Public Library
David showed a whole bunch of library Websites that give users a really bad experience. There was one where they actually asked users whether they wanted a Flash or HTML Web site before they could get to the front page. Crazy! Then he showed Flickr [...]
Internet Librarian Day 1: Using Ethnographic Methods to Know Your Users
Monday, October 23rd, 2006Judi Briden, Katie Clark and Isabel Kaplan from the University of Rochester.
They did a two year project to determine what undergraduates really do when they write research papers. They had a multi-disciplinary team including an anthropologist who taught the team about ethnographic methods. The findings from this would inform their Website design, instructional design, etc.
They [...]
Internet Librarian Day 1: Innovative Uses of Web 2.0 Technologies
Monday, October 23rd, 2006Jason Clark (Montana State University) and Karen Coombs (University of Houston)
Incorporating Web 2.0 into Library Websites by Karen Coombs
Web 2.0 concepts –
Radical decentralization – usually you have a Web manager who puts the content online. The University of Houston’s library has 1500 pages, so responsibilities for Web development needs to be decentralized. They developed [...]
Internet Librarian Day 1: Public Library 2.0: Emerging Technologies and Changing Roles
Monday, October 23rd, 2006Michael Stephens, Jenny Levine and Helene Blowers
Yes, I know I’m not a public librarian, but I thought this would be a really interesting talk. I’ve never actually heard Michael and Jenny speaking together before (am I like the last person on earth?). Michael Casey unfortunately couldn’t make it, but I was extremely excited that his [...]
Internet Librarian Day 1: Getting Started
Monday, October 23rd, 2006I am in beautiful Monterey now, having left the Wine Country this weekend to head to Internet Librarian. The vacation was everything I needed it to be and I’m here at the conference, refreshed and excited to learn new things. Sadly, wifi is a bit hard to come by around here, so I’m blogging on [...]
The good, the bad and the utterly hillarious
Sunday, October 8th, 2006I have been ridiculously busy getting ready for the five talks I have coming up in the next three weeks. I have to have the slides for them all totally done this week because I’m going on vacation from the 13th until the start of Internet Librarian. And, for the first time in a long [...]
Genre Fiction ID System
Thursday, October 5th, 2006My dad (Jody Gorran) is a crazy entrepreneur. He has had more businesses (and business ideas) since I was born than years that I’ve been alive. From a hair salon, to treasure hunting, to water beds and gel matresses, to solar panels, to a housing development, to home security kits, to online scrapbooks and many, [...]
« Previous Entries