The Distant Librarian

This American Life - back and legit

Nope, I'm not moving back to the States ;-)  You may recall that back in June Jon Udell (and some others) had figured out how to build an RSS feed to receive episodes of This American Life that were already available for free on the web, but only in a streaming, listen while connected, format.  Shortly after that, the good folks at This American Life asked those who had put together such feeds to take them down.  It was all pretty amicable, but left us podcast-listening junkies out in the cold again. 

Until this coming Monday, October 16th, at which time This American Life will begin offering a legitimate feed of their own.  Huzzah!  Thanks to BoingBoing for passing on the good news.  Cool, I even notice on the TAL page that, "Note: everyone who paid for a
podcast subscription via Audible will receive a refund. You don’t have
to do anything; you’ll automatically receive the refund."

Technorati Tags: Podcasts, This_American_Life

The door is open - share your tutorials! (ANTS)

Back in February I announced the COPPUL ANimated Tutorial Sharing Project (ANTS), but noted that the COPPUL Directors had not given us the green light to open the project to non-COPPUL libraries.  Well gang, the light has turned green, and while I've been meaning to tell you that for a couple weeks now, a recent post by Chad on Library Voice about sharing screencast sourcecode seems to prove that the time is ripe.

To refresh your memory, ANTS makes use of a wiki at the Univerisity of Winnipeg and the DSpace repository here at the U of Calgary to coordinate the sharing of source code for animated tutorials, aka screencasts.  If I build a tutorial that you like, you can grab the original source code and modify it to suit your institution.  While our effort at coordination may look a little indimidating (we have guidelines 'n stuff), it's really mostly common sense, so shouldn't prove to be a burden to anyone who wants to contibute. 

And this is your invitation! Have you built a screencast for one of the databases on the wiki?  How about one that's not on the wiki? (that's just our list of databases we felt would be most useful within COPPUL libraries).  Why not share your source code?  It's easy.  I'm the administrator for the DSpace collection, so I'll review your submission before it's committed to the archive, and I'll let you know if there's anything amiss, so it's a friendly contact you'll have :-)  Right now have just under two dozen tutorials up there.  Go ahead and take a peek, and borrow any that you might find useful for your institution.  There are even a couple in French.  Like Chad, we are also using a Creative Commons 2.5 license on these puppies. 

Thanks in advance - off to let all the other wikis know about this project...


Technorati Tags: screencasting, sharing, ANTS

CFP: What is the role of distance education in the implementation of the right to education?

This might be an interesting idea for some of you:

The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in collaboration with 5 international journals, is launching a call for research and “effective practices” papers to be published in 2008 concerning distance education and the right to education (in particular reference to article 26 of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights of December 10th, 1948) :

    * What is the role of distance education in the implementation of the right to education ?
    * How is distance education involved when education is seen as a right ? What is its position in educational policy, as a factor of quality and an instrument for liberty.

This theme can be approached from multiple points of view, pedagogical, sociological, economical, political, legal.

More information.

Book sales get a lift from Google scan plan

Hmm, looks like I was right (me and every other sane person); publishers are starting to admit that the books that are available through Google Book Search and Amazon's Search Inside program are <gasp!> actually selling more copies!

Some quotes from the Reuters piece: ""Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers," said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.", ""We suspect that Google really helps us sell more books," said Kim Zwollo, Springer's global director of special licensing, declining to provide specific figures because the company is privately owned." ""Our experience has been that the revenue generated from Google has been pretty modest, whereas the Amazon program has generated more book sales," Penguin Chief Executive John Makinson told Reuters at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week."

Technorati Tags: Google_Book_Search, Amazon, Publishers, Sales

Huge list of screen sharing tools

I've mentioned sceen sharing / co-browsing tools like Jybe and Unyte before, but holy cow, take a look at the list compiled at Kolabora.com!  That is all.


Technorati Tags: Screen_sharing, co-browsing

Just what am I looking at?

I have been increasingly interested in how flat the world of research literature seems to appear to the average undergraduate student.  I say "seems to appear" because I haven't actually talked to any students about this, so it's really just a wild theory.  Here goes.

I think students who have only researched through their computer monitor have a very hard time understanding what they're looking at.  Through the monitor, a page is a page is a page, whether it be from a scholarly journal, a book, Newsweek, a website, a chat window...  There are almost none of the visual clues that are present in a more traditional physical piece of information that might make it easier to tell if you're about to use a scholarly publication or a piece of crap in your paper.  If I've got a PDF from Academic Search Premier and I don't recognize the name of the publication and there are no ads on the page, surely it's scholarly, right?  Sure, there are options in many library databases that will help a student limit to scholarly material, but I still think they don't get it conceptually at all. 

And it's not their fault!  Think about it; if you'd never seen a physical scholarly journal, having grown up in East Rubberboot Saskatchewan, what frame of reference would you have?  You're told to access library resources through this magical screen, that also provides access to Google and Wikipedia, and hey, all these words on the screen kinda look like they come from the same place.  Guess they all must be equal! 

I was thinking about that when I saw a demo recently of one of the Gale InfoTrac products which, when viewed in IE but not Firefox, shows where on a physical page of a newspaper the article you've accessed appears.  I like that!  Kinda reminds me of what some of the handheld eBook readers do, which is attempt to show a representation of how many pages you are deep in a book, even though that's a fallacy for that particular product.  But it gives the reader a frame of reference.  I think that's missing from library web-based research, and aside from the image on the right, I'm not sure how this is best corrected.

Or I may be completely out to lunch.  Any thoughts?

Join a Canadian Library Association Interest Group...

...even if you're not a member of CLA!  Laurie the Librarian reports that CLA is now allowing pretty much anyone to join on of 23 interest groups at $30 (Cdn) per group.  She suggests (and I second) Services for Distance Learning.


Technorati Tags: CLA

Zotero launches

Well, Zotero has launched, and I'm all bummed to learn that it requires Firefox 2.0, which is a release candidate (beta) build, which means many of the extensions I rely upon are not likely to work, which means I'm not installing it yet, which means I can't install Zotero yet.  Lemmie know how you like it if you're adventurous...


Technorati Tags: Zotero

The Fall of Screencasting

Ha! Got you with the title of this post, didn't I?  No, screencasting's not heading downhill; quite the contrary.  That's just me being witty, see, 'cause it's Fall, and there's lots going on with screencasting.

First up, both Adobe and Techsmith have new versions of their screencasting products out this month.

Adobe is now shipping Captivate 2.  I recently attended a webinar they gave for the Education market, and while the webinar didn't really seem to be geared towards the education market to me, it did introduce some of the new features.  See for yourself - the webinar is now available online.  There were a couple of really nice features, and I hope to download the trial version for a looksee soon. 

Techsmith has also polished off version 4 of Camtasia Studio, and it will be available for download on October 17th, also with a 30-day free trial.  Techsmith has comped me a license key, so I have the full version now and have begun to play with it.  I like it :-)  There are lots of new features, including the ability to publish simultaneously to formats for the web and iPod, and you can just strip out the audio as an mp3 if you like.  They've done a really nice job with a new audio enhancement feature, and this is one I've played with already.  It strips out background noise, and equalizes volume levels.  I had my mic set way too high on the first screencast I recorded and the before and after were very noticeable.  Great feature.  Lots of other stuff, but I'll wait until I've tried them before reporting back.

And finally, my incentive for trying the latest versions of these tools, along with those from Qarbon and the freebies, is my November 8 SirsiDynix Institute entitled Show and Tell the Easy Way - an Introduction to Screencasting. It runs from 11am-12 EST (8-9am PST) and will also be available after the fact as a recorded session and audio-only podcast.  From the blurb:

This presentation will introduce screencasting, the software that is available to create screencasts, and the platforms on which they can be run. You'll learn how to plan a recorded procedure (the most time-consuming, yet often overlooked step) and get tips for making effective and engaging screencasts.

I won't be building screencasts during the presentation of course, but you'll reap the rewards of my preparation here as I report back on what I like and dislike about each of the products as I prepare :-)  The SirsiDynix Institutes are free, but you do need to register ahead of time.  See you there?

DistLib LinkDump

Gosh I hate to do a link dump; each of these deserve their own post, but I've just had so little time over the past couple of weeks, and see no real openings in the next few that I've got to clear these "to blog" tidbits out.  Lots of good stuff here, and I'm sure you'll find something good within - I'll keep each one short, and in no particular order:

From It's All Good comes notice of an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education called Show Your Librarian Some Love.  Hope it sticks with some faculty members.

The Centered Librarian informs us that the Chicago Manual of Style is now available online.  Sure wish the APA would do the same thing!  Oh wait, it's a pay-for service.  Still, nice to be able to search the thing...

The Call for Participants for the Five Weeks to a Social Library online course is now out.  The course is free and runs from Feb 12 - March 17, 2007, and is limited to 40 participants.  All presentations will be archived and made available for open viewing as well, so you can still learn even if you don't get to participate during the course.

Jenny Levine also notes a good-sounding Virtual Institute being sponsored by ACRL called The User at the Center.  Registration deadline is October 26th for this one, and unlike the above, it's not free.  Which is fine.

Lorcan Dempsey notes that JISC has made available an "academic database assessment tool" that will compare the contents of various databases one might be considering for purchase.  I haven't compared them side by side, but it sure sounds a lot like the CUFTS Resources Comparison Tool I noted in March 2005...  (which in turn has been updated, you'll see when you follow all the links...)

And finally, I haven't even made the time to follow along with Techsmith's 30 Screencasts in 30 Days, in which product manager Troy Stein brings us 30 tips and tricks about Camtasia Studio.  They're up to day 7, and I've got some catching up to do :-)


Technorati Tags: Librarians, Style_Manuals, Social_Libraries, Database_comparison_tools, Screencasting