Posted inlibraries reference tech trends
Chat interoperability
My new friend, and fellow Wesleyan alum, Stephen Francoeur, wrote: Wouldn't it be cool if your patrons could use an IM client to chat with your web contact center software…
Posted inour digital future social bookmarking
What’s happening in social bookmarking
I have been wanting to write more about social bookmarking for a long time, but I had two job interviews last week and an all-day marathon interview to prepare for…
Posted inblogging
Fanning a flamer’s fire
Why do people like Michael Gorman and Blaise Cronin (and note that I will not link to any of their articles, but you can find critiques at Free Range Librarian…
Posted inreference tech trends
Jybe: Take Two
I still have not been able to install the Jybe extension in Firefox without my computer melting down, but I have been successful in getting it to work in IE…
Wiki Etiquette
It has been interesting to observe how people have approached the wiki I created. I've been thrilled to see that people are contributing to it and have added some great…
Posted inour digital future
Jybe and the difference between free software and open source
I've gotten very excited by the reviews I've read about Jybe, but I had never actually given it a try myself. Until today. For those who don't know, Jybe is…
Posted inALA
ALA Conference Wiki
Last year, I went to my first ALA Conference, which was also my first library conference ever. Before going, I really had no idea what to expect. So I had…
Posted inGeneral
Camtasia vs. Captivate
Note: This review is from 2005 and is not relevant to current versions of Camtasia and Captivate. A few years ago, my husband bought Camtasia 1.1 so that we could…
Posted inlibraries our digital future
Is innovation all about technology?
I'm sure there are people who think that technology is the be-all-end-all and that every bleeding-edge technology should be implemented in libraries. But I don't happen to know any of…
Posted inlibraries
The innovation gap
George at It's all good just got back from giving a presentation at the New Jersey Library Association where he was asked a difficult question: This was an excellent audience,…
Posted inlibraries our digital future search
The Failure of Middleware, Part 7: OAI and Google Scholar
The Open Archives Initiative develops interoperability standards with the goal of developing easy ways to access digital content and improve scholarly communication. They have developed a protocol for harvesting XML-formatted…
Posted inlibraries our digital future search
The Failure of Middleware, Part 6: Link Resolvers
Link Resolvers allow users to move from a citation to the actual article (so long as the library has access to it), regardless of which database the article happens to…
Posted inlibraries our digital future search
The Failure of Middleware, Part 5: The Unintegrated Library System & Federated Search
Sorry for the delay in posting the rest of this, but we were flying to Florida yesterday to visit family. Nice to be in consistently warm weather for a few…
Posted injob search random
Gratuitous pet pics
I have been wanting to own a dog since I moved away from home -- and our family dog -- to attend college in Connecticut. This desire has only intensified…
Posted inour digital future reference
More from Google Maps
A few months ago, Google had purchased Keyhole, a program that allowed you to look at satellite photos of anywhere in the U.S. They allowed users to download it for…
Posted inlibraries our digital future
The Failure of Middleware, Part 4: What works?
Next, our fictional student is going into RedLightGreen to find resources for her paper. RedLightGreen, a union catalog, is an excellent tool for resource discovery as the user only needs…
Posted inlibraries our digital future
The Failure of Middleware, Part 3: How do we measure up?
So now that we know what our population wants, we can see how our OPACs measure up. I created a screencast using my alma mater’s OPAC to illustrate some of…
Posted inlibraries our digital future
The Failure of Middleware, Part 2: Who are our users?
The first thing anyone designing a website or a search engine should ask themselves is how can we meet the needs of our users? In the case of academic libraries,…
Posted inlibraries our digital future
The Failure of Middleware, Part 1: What’s the Problem?
In many libraries, we see collections that do not meet the needs of their users. This problem can affect small rural public libraries with limited budgets and prestigious academic libraries…
Posted inopen source
Open source alternatives!
When I was talking to my dad and he told me that he had a copy of Adobe Acrobat's PDF Writer, I realized that not everyone is up on the…
