The Distant Librarian

Another article comparing Schoogle to traditional library databases

Both TJ and Dean have pointers to this new article:

Susan Gardner Susanna Eng, Gaga over Google? Scholar in the Social Sciences, Library Hi-Tech News, 22, 8 (2005) pp. 42-45.

As usual, I haven't read it yet, but it's sitting on my printer :-) 

Gardner and Eng draw pretty much the same conclusion as Giustini in the article from the other day:  Know thy friend / enemy / neighbor.

Really warming up to Camtasia Studio

Because I learned to screencast with Qarbon ViewletBuilder I have long felt that it was best to capture screens and then go back and dub voice and annotation.  I've gotta say though, I'm really starting to come around to the idea of the quick and dirty live capture with audio to just get the thing out the door.  Both Camtasia Studio and Macromedia Captivate offer this option; I've been using Camtasia more of late. 

A few minutes ago I wanted to share a tip with a colleague, and it took me all of two minutes to record myself (with audio) performing this tip, then about 4 more minutes to to produce the unedited video and upload it to the campus server.  Sent her an email with the link and voila!  Less time than it would've taken to walk to her office and show her the tip.  Could've just as easily emailed her the finished product except for our voracious campus email filters stopping almost any weird attachments...

Another idea for video iPod and libraries

Brian and I have been corresponding today and he's gone off on a related tangent for ways libraries can get themselves on the new video iPods.  I like it!  (of course now he's tipped his hand, and even if it is edgy someone will figure out it's all carefully crafted ;-)  Link: The Sisyphus Stone.

Screencasts on the new iPod?

OK, disclaimer here, I'm not suggesting anyone use the tools mentioned in this post to break any laws.  As many of you know, Apple unveiled a new iPod yesterday that can play video.  Apparently all the cool (rich) kids will have one.  Unfortunately I won't, so I can't test any of this out.  If all the cool kids are going to have one, don't you think we should be able to let them watch our library tutorial screencasts on them?  Having not seen one, I don't know if the screen size is too small to make this feasible, but I think someone should try!

Here's a link to a tutorial (not a screencast) on How to Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod Using Free Software.  This method requires a Mac, and seems to want the source file to be on a DVD, which most of our screencasts aren't.  But it does offer some good information on CODECS, resolution, and screen size.  I did a quick Google search and found AVS Video Converter, which claims to be able to convert AVI, Real Video, QuickTime, or WMV to MP4, which apparently is what the iPod wants to see.  I have no experience with this product (which isn't free), but it would seem to be what we'd need to get our screencast output into the correct format.

Now I know that Camtasia Studio allows alternate output formats when saving a screencast (AVI, WMV, MOV, Real ), and I thought my original fav ViewletBuilder did too, but I can actually only find SWF as the output option for that product :-(, so unless someone knows of an SWF->x converter we may be out of luck making Viewlets available on the iPod.  Hmm, Captivate only allows output as SWF too.  'kay, Google to the rescue again with the following possible SWF -> AVI converters: WinMPG Video Convert and ADSharit (again I have no experience with these).

OK, so to recap, we need someone with 1) a new video iPod, 2) Camtasia Studio, and 3) AVS Video Converter or similar.  If someone can provide me with item #1 I'll be pleased to take the experiment from there ;-)  But seriously, we need to give this a try - who's going to volunteer?

Update: There's a page on the Apple site that shows how to create video for the iPod using QuickTime 7 Pro.

Blackboard and WebCT Announce Plans to Merge

Blackboard and WebCT Announce Plans to Merge. -- they claim "both Blackboard and WebCT product lines will remain intact and supported".  But, "Over time, Blackboard will incorporate the best features and usability characteristics from the two product lines into a new standards-based product set."

Google Librarian Center

Found via LIS News, the  Google Librarian Center.

Librarians and Google share a mission: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We support librarians like yourself who work each day to further that mission. This page is a first step toward improving and expanding that support.

Keep up to date with Google.

In the next few months, we'll be launching a newsletter that will go out four times a year — just for librarians. Subscribe now to receive Google tips, news of new features, and other information relevant to you.

Followup - after subscribing you'll be taken to a Google Groups page - right now there are 179 members in this group, and I haven't seen this before, but you can get RSS feeds of the messages posted to this group, so I guess you don't even have to give Google your email address for the newsletter - the RSS feed for the latest 100 messages is here. (right now there's only one message in the group; an introductory one).

A look at Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scirus

I've just printed this out and will read later today.  to whet your appetite, here's a line from the conclusion:

In summary, information professionals have no choice but to recommend Google Scholar under certain conditions and caveats.

Link: A look at Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scirus.

Things are going to be busy around here...

Neat stuff brewing on my campus - not sure if we're going to be providing additional services to this new constituency, or if they just get access to all the online resources.

Link: In The News: U of C to break ground on Campus Calgary Digital Library.

The Campus Calgary Digital Library (CCDL) is a partnership with all the public post-secondary institutions in Calgary – Bow Valley College, Mount Royal College, ACAD, and SAIT Polytechnic – as well as those in neighbouring regions, such as Red Crow College on the Blood Reserve. The partnership is a first in Canada and will create an information network that will see the university’s vast electronic library holdings made available to the public electronically for use in business, education and non-profit applications. It will make it possible to create a single library card for all post-secondary students to gain access to the University’s digital holdings.

Google formally declares war on Microsoft

The Centered Librarian has an interesting post - Google formally declares war on Microsoft

GOOGLE HAS confirmed that it will launch free spreadsheet and word-processing software online and take on Microsoft in one of its biggest markets.

Under the deal, Google will allow web users to access Sun's OpenOffice from a toolbar.

More at the Brisbane Courier Mail, here.

I had seen the Sun/Google announcement, but not the confirmation that OpenOffice was involved.  Seems to be a lot of librarian interest in the past couple weeks about web-accessible productivity tools.  Library Clips has a really nice roundup (or at least a list), and Rebecca's playing with several too. 

New article on collaborative digital reference service

Stephen at the Digital Reference blog writes about a New article on collaborative digital reference service

There's an insightful article in the latest issue of College and Research Libraries (Vol. 66, No. 5) detailing the experiences of the libraries at the University of Illinois at Chicago with their digital reference services. Titled "Quantifying Cooperation: Collaborative Digital Reference Service in the Large Academic Library," the article has lots of choice nuggets...

Long Distance Librarian: Just close your eyes and jump...

Not sure if Kylie's actually practicing distance librarianship, or is just a librarian a long way from her home, but the Long Distance Librarian has just launched live from the UAE.

And while we're on the topic of the UAE, can I just mention that it's snowing really hard here right now?  I think I'm developing a hang-up on this Calgary weather thing...