The Distant Librarian

Links mentioned in Chad and Paul’s IL2007 talk on Tech Tools for Library Outreach

In no particular order...

• Shifting Gears: Getting Up to Get Into the Flow (PDF)
• Joe Janes at IL2007
• Facebook
• Meebo
• Jing
• Screencast-o-matic.com
• The BizWiki -
• Podcasts from Alden Library
• Audacity
• Wink
• Skype
• Camstudio
• FAQ software - KnowledgebasePublisher

Back channel for Paul and Chad's presentation at Internet Librarian 2007

Back channel for Paul and Chad's presentation at Internet Librarian 2007: Tech Tools for Library Outreach.  If you've got wireless and are in the room, feel free to chat amongst yourselves or provide us with live feedback during our presentation.  Can't promise we'll be able to respond, but we'll try!

Recommended Book for Canadians

I suppose some from other countries might be interested as well, but Laura Murray's book, Canadian copyright, a citizen's guide, is about to or has just been released.  No reviews yet, but I've followed her writing at faircopyright.ca (now a blog with an RSS feed - yay!) for some time and am really looking forward to the book - already on order for our library.


Technorati Tags: copyright

Instantbird - New Open Source Cross Platform IM client

Learned from Tom Boone at Library Laws that there's a new cross-platform IM client out called InstantBird, "based on Mozilla technologies and Pidgin".  And it's open source.  It's pretty spartan right now being on its first release, but worked right out of the box for me.  Just enter your account details in the account wizard, and for Google Talk, use XMPP protocol and fill the username with your Google Mail e-mail address like this: "my.address@gmail.com/instantbird". Then type "talk.google.com" in the entry "Connect server".

Right now I don't see any indication that someone on the other end is typing, and I don't seem to be able to edit the names of the people in my contact list, and I can't minimize to the clock tray, so it takes up space in my taskbar.  But it does connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk and many others I don't use, like MySpaceIM, GroupWise, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, etc.

Oh, and get this - Windows, OSX 10.4+ and Linux (2.2.14+)!  I've only installed it on the Windows machine so far...

Need some current stats on distance education in the US?

As reported in the Chronicle, the Sloan Consortium has just released a report titled Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning.  The study addresses the following questions: How Many Students are Learning Online? Where has the Growth in Online Learning Occurred?  Why do Institutions Provide Online Offerings? What are the Prospects for Future Online Enrollment Growth?  and What are the Barriers to Widespread Adoption of Online Education?

No mention of libraries in the report.

Jon Udell on remixing the library

Abstract: In an online world of small pieces loosely joined, librarians are among the most well qualified and highly motivated joiners of those pieces. Library patrons, meanwhile, are in transition. Once mainly consumers of information, they are now, on the two-way web, becoming producers too. Can libraries function not only as centers of consumption, but also as centers of production?

Jon Udell posts the text of a talk he gave at the Global Research Library conference earlier this month.  It's not too long, and it'll make you think.

E-JASL: The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship

I've had this one sitting in my to-read for too long - time to pass it on - E-JASL: The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship v8 no2 includes a couple of interesting-sounding articles -
Reaching Students with Facebook: Data and Best Practices and Reaching Out to Off-Campus Students via Blackboard^TM: A Consortial Library’s Experience.

2007 Virtual Reference Symposium presentations available

Sarah points out that the presentations from the 2007 Virtual Reference Symposium are now available.  Lots of stuff on the big fee services, and on IM as well.


Technorati Tags: IM, VR

Meebo Alert for Firefox

Yet another reason to use Firefox - Aaron just pointed out that there's a new plug-in for Firefox and Meebo that will really help with the alerts - you still have to have Meebo open in a tab, or a sidebar, but you no longer have to have that tab in the foreground for fear of missing an incoming chat request - now you can get an alert box and a blinking browser window.  Just installed it and we'll see how it goes.


Technorati Tags: Meebo, Firefox

Meredith on Online learning and its impact on public libraries

Meredith Farkas has a lengthy post discussing the problems of distance education programs not supporting their students adequately, or possibly just not informing them of the resources available to them, and the burden those students sometimes place on their local public libraries.  Some good comments starting to pile up already.

Improving the SFX menu

David Walker at Cal State has a really compelling presentation on why they've modified their SFX menu to look the way it does.  It's a 20-minute Captivate presentation.  If you look after SFX at your school, you really should give this a look.

(thanks for the tip, Jennifer)

Two interesting developments from ProQuest re: Dissertations

A colleague passed along the following links you may also find of interest:

1. ProQuest CSA has arranged with Google and Google Scholar to allow indexing and searching across bibliographic data for graduate works published in 2005 and forward.
2. PQDT Open is an online repository of dissertations and theses published on an open access basis. The full text – in PDF format – of each open access graduate work is available to any researcher for free.

(Thanks for the info, Saundra)

Technorati Tags: Dissertations, ProQuest

Camtasia Studio 5 Review

I mentioned at the beginning of the month that Camtasia Studio 5 was being released, and also that because I'm still on Win2K at the office I hadn't had a chance to play with it.  Still true, but Michael Pick at Web TV Wire has a very comprehensive overview and review of the screencasting product, including some links to additional reviews all the way down at the bottom.  Definitely worth a read if you're in the market for a screencasting tool.


Technorati Tags: Screencasting, Camtasia

Meebo Widgets - Trouble in Paradise

So I've recently noticed that our Meebo Widgets are not correctly showing our status for our reference service; they almost always display that we're offline even when we're logged in.  Looks from the support forums like we're not the only ones, and it's frustrating that nobody from Meebo is chiming in to offer a solution.  Jocelyn, a librarian from Arizona Western, does suggest that if you enter your meebo room (first contact on your list), then the widgets may display your status correctly.  Worth a try - I was unable to even connect to our Room when I tried it at the end of my shift yesterday...



Anybody else having this problem, or found a solution?


Technorati Tags: Meebo

Sept PRIMO Site of the Month: Citing Your Sources: APA and MLA Citation Styles

Noticed a really nice Flash tutorial from Eastern Washington University was chosen as the September 2007 PRIMO Site of the Month - Citing Your Sources: APA and MLA Citation Styles.  After learning about citation styles, users have the chance to click and drag various parts of the citation into the correct order, and then check their answers.  Also learned from the interview on the PRIMO site that APA has finally come out with something new addressing the citation of electronic sources: APA Style Guide to Electronic References.  It's only available as a PDF, but site licenses are available.

MozBackup - for transferring Thunderbird and Firefox profiles

So I moved offices this weekend, and also moved to a new desktop machine.  Used MozBackup to transfer my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles, which includes all bookmarks, preferences, extensions, cookies, etc.  In a nutshell, after only about 10 minutes, I was fully functional w/o having to hunt down and reinstall anything - wonderful time saver!

Trillian coming to the Mac

The Cerulean Studios blog reports that they're going to be bringing Trillian Astra to OSX.


Technorati Tags: Trillian, OSX, Reference, IM

Becoming slightly more Distant

Starting next week I've got a new job, at least for the next 6 months.  Our Public Services Systems librarian recently left for the warmer pastures of British Columbia, and rather than operate with a hole in a critical position we're filling the position on a 6-month interim basis with me.  During that time we'll launch a proper search, and I should know if I want to compete for the position by then!  I'll be responsible for all things web, and for making sure we have a good interface with the public on all our electronic products.  I move up 2 floors in the building, but I don't think I really get much of a better view out the window.  I'll certainly get a better view of how our electronic services are working for our staff and patrons, and I really look forward to learning more about that.

In the meantime we're going to see if anyone else in our organization wants to try out the DE position.  I'll be sure to let y'all know next year if my position actually becomes available :-)  I see no reason to really change the focus of the blog, though I do hope to be learning about some more technical things and may lean a bit more that way (sorry Shauna).  That said, I'm told I need to always remember the public part of the job title, so translating stuff from the technical to the everyday should remain a big part of this.

IM Reference launches at the U of Calgary

Yesterday we soft-launched our IM reference service here at the U of Calgary.  We're using Meebo to handle all our accounts, and also chose it for the ability to use the MeeboMe widgets.  Back when I did my screencasting seminar for the SirsiDynix Institute, Sarah Houghton-Jan asked a question that really stuck with me; "can you embed screencasts within databases so they're available to students right when they really need them?"  And so what we've done with some of our widgets is embed them at various points within our catalogue (click through for full-sized images):

Another neat feature is that when we're logged in to Meebo, the name of the MeeboMe Widget the patron is using is displayed, so as soon as they pop online for a chat we know they're coming to us from the catalogue, which gives us a heads-up on the type of question or research they're currently doing.  Now if only we could get these things into some of our databases - anyone have any ideas?

Technorati Tags: Meebo, IM

Camtasia Studio v5 on the way

Techsmith is about to release version 5 of Camtasia Studio, their excellent screencasting product.  Betsy Weber is going to be introducing a new feature each day from now until the release date on October 9th, and first up is a feature called SmartFocus.  Troy Stein, Camtasia's product manager, has a good screencast (how else?) about the feature, and he sounds really excited about it.  I'm not sure how well this will work for library-type screencasts; I worry that the zooming might detract from the whole production, but maybe not.  I haven't had a chance to try the beta of this release as sadly it won't be compatible with Win2K, which is what I'm still running on the office machine.


Technorati Tags: Screencasting, Camtasia

CLUE: Campus Library User Education

This showed up in my delicious feed watching for other people bookmarking examples of screencasts - U of Wisconsin-Madison's CLUE: Campus Library User Education.  It's built using Adobe Captivate, and doesn't include a lot of what we'd traditionally consider "screencasting", but I really like how it's seamlessly integrated into the web pages instead of offered as a series of stand-alone popup modules.  It mostly makes use of transitions on static slides, as would a powerpoint presentation, but at opportune times it moves into actual animated screencasts as well.  Background information about CLUE is here.  They've also done a great closing credits section, but where's the fun music during this section?!?  Oh yeah, and it all seems like some really good information for the undergraduate too! 

UPDATE: here's the traditional page of screencasts at UW-Madison.

Technorati Tags: Captivate, Screencasts, Libraries