Making Customizable Interactive Tutorials with Google Forms
Please note that the copies of these tutorials have not been updated since 2020 and Google Forms has many new features that have come out since then. In September, I…
LibGuides, you’re not “Web 2.0” without an open API
Update: I've been in touch with a Springshare representative who tells me that things like the contextually aware D2L widget from Portland State University will work in LibGuides 2.0 and…
Library DIY has been released!
This is just a quick note to say that Library DIY (which I wrote about in a previous post) has been released! I am so very proud of this project.…
Posted inhi instruction librarianship libraries reference tech trends Work
Good for what? Considering context in building learning objects.
I'm working with a colleague of mine (Amy Hofer of Threshold Concepts fame) to create a suite of tutorials that are going to be integrated into online University Studies (think…
Posted ininstruction librarianship libraries management MPOW our digital future reference tech trends Work
Library DIY: Unmediated point-of-need support
I recently realized that while I write about a lot of things, I do not often write about the work I'm doing at Portland State and through the Oregon Library…
Posted ininstruction reference
“I need three peer reviewed articles” or the Freshman research paper
For the past six and a half years, I have been teaching Freshman about peer-review and how to find peer-reviewed articles through the library (or Google Scholar). I've developed all…
Invisible goalposts, support and having a plan
This summer, I was engaged with quite a few projects (several of which I was in charge of), but was able to make time to focus on scholarship just about…
Numbers vs. meaning
Forgive this less-than-well-thought-out post. I've been thinking a lot about assessment lately and the librarianly love of numbers in assessment, and I'm a troubled by the way that some academic…
Posted inlibrarianship reference
Answers – and I thought that was our schtick!
As a new mother, I spend a a lot of time awake with Reed when most sensible people are asleep. Consequently, I've seen plenty of infomercials and commercials that are…
Separate but not equal?
When I read David King's post about Ask-a-Librarian services last week, I didn't have a strong emotional response to it. That was, until he wrote a follow up which brought…
Posted inlibrarianship reference writing
Internet Cool Tools for Physicians
My friend, the incredibly awesome David Rothman, has co-authored a book (with another fantastic medical librarian and a physician) on Internet Cool Tools for Physicians. The book is designed to…
Posted ininstruction librarianship library school management our digital future reference social software tech trends
Building 21st century librarians AND libraries
There were three recent posts that got me thinking a lot about the growing necessity to have tech-savvy people in public services positions. The first was Dorothea Salo's post about…
We have wiki!
Library Research Guides wiki Originally uploaded by librarianmer A while back, I wrote about the challenges I had in finding the right platform for our subject guides. Well, I'm pleased…
Don’t take what you know for granted
As liaison to all of the distance learning programs at our University, I frequently deal with our Interlibrary Loan Librarian. We can't do traditional book interlibrary loan with our distance…
Posted ininstruction reference Work
When are we doing enough?
Since I got to Norwich, my main priority has been to ensure that the distance learners have access to all the information they need to do research through the library.…
Pennvibes
The University of Pennsylvania sure has some pretty impressive library tech folks! First they create PennTags, now they're working on Pennvibes, which, according to this abstract from the DLF conference,…
Reflections on Internet Librarian and LAUC-B Conferences (or 5 talks at 2 conferences in 1 week)
Today [Note: This part was written Monday] will be my first day back at work after the marathon that was Internet Librarian and the LAUC-B conference. I ended up giving…
The long road towards subject guide 2.0
When I finally got control over the library's Web presence last year (a long process better discussed in a post of its own), the first thing I did was take…
Posted inreference
Fun with Elsevier
At my school, we used to subscribe to the Science Direct engineering package for our online engineering students. It worked well, but got very little use since most of the…
Whatever you do don’t use Google!
After we teach our students how to distinguish between authoritative and unauthoritative resources, we need to actually show them how to find such authoritative resources. While our databases are great,…
