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 days. When library catalogs were first developed, all of the electronic needs of a library system were fulfilled by the ILS. At the time, there …
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 as the years have passed. I have frequent dreams about owning a dog and I’ve even named him/her (Riley). All of my close friends and …
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 free for a week or so and play with it. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until today that I got to see what Google …
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 to enter one search query, and then can easily narrow or broaden her search by subject, author, or language. It combines searching and browsing in …
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 the challenges users have when using catalogs. Obviously some catalogs are more sophisticated or offer more flexibility in searching, but some are even more difficult …
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, those users are faculty and students. This year’s first-year college students were eight-years-old when Yahoo! was born. Technology is ubiquitous to them and they approach …
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 that have comprehensive print and electronic holdings. It’s easy to understand the problem of limited funds, but if a library has an excellent collection why …
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 wonders of open source software. I wish I’d told him prior to his purchase that there is a great open source alternative that creates PDFs …
I got back early Saturday morning from my interview trip and slept on-and-off all day. Travelling across time zones and the time change have really messed up my sleep cycle. The interview went quite well! I feel like I developed a good rapport with everyone I met and nothing disastrous happened with my presentations. Of …
Darn it! Spring’s finally sprung in Chicago and I have to go away!!! Well, at least I had one lovely day of walking the city streets without mittens and seeing all of the happy people sitting outside in street cafes. This is the best time to be in the city. When it starts to warm …
I just want to thank everyone who wrote me with insights and suggestions for my presentation. I have received so many wonderful emails over the past week from my colleagues. And a special thanks to Steven Cohen and Paul Pival for getting the word out for me. What I love most about blogging is the …
To continue my theme of practical user-centered applications of technology in libraries and education, I started thinking about podcasting. I don’t really know how it could be used in libraries. I don’t imagine patrons would want to listen to an audio listing of events or interesting items read by their librarians and I don’t know …
I’m going to be doing a presentation on information literacy in a few weeks, and I’m planning on looking at how new technologies can be used in information literacy instruction. I was thinking of looking at screencasting/flash tutorials (using camtasia, captivate, etc.), podcasting, wikis, blogging, rss, social bookmarking (del.icio.us, FURL, etc.), or anything else that …
I’ll admit that I was initially somewhat indifferent to podcasting. I’m not sure why… maybe I thought it was just a flash in the pan and would disappear as quickly as it appeared. Or because I’m not currently driving anywhere and I can’t listen to things and read/write at the same time. Well, I’m willing …
Just about every day, I learn about some other cool use for new technologies that makes my head spin. And I love it. Alan Levine (of cogdogblog) has been interviewing librarians and other techies via skype for an article about recent trends in Internet audio. Here, he writes about what he used to do it. …
Looking at my alma mater’s library website, I noticed that they are implementing a new federated search tool that searches eight resources (a mix of A&I databases and full-text). It’s powered by Metalib from Ex Libris, a company I think is pretty great. I was really excited at first, until I decided to test it …
Two bloggers from whose writing I get a great deal of food for thought were just named “movers and shakers” by Library Journal. Congratulations Aaron Schmidt and Michael Stephens! You two really should be proud — not of some mention in Library Journal, but for all you’ve done for your libraries and for librarianship. Rock …
I got a call yesterday from an institution I’d interviewed with over the phone last week. They want to fly me down to interview with the search committee, my potential supervisor, and anyone from the library staff or University faculty who want to watch me present on three topics (eeek!). I’m kind of excited about …
My husband and I were having dinner with the new librarian friend I met at the conference last week and her fiancee (who is also a librarian). He said that he’s heard I was a blogger and asked what the title of my blog was. So I told him and he exclaimed: Oh my gosh! …
Via the Eclectic Librarian, I learned about and helped to stop a grave injustice. What was this terrible injustice you might ask? It was poor Wesley Crusher (from Star Trek: The Next Generation) being again named the most annoying character on the show. The Eclectic Librarian pointed me to Wil Wheaton’s blog, which I’ve browsed …