The Distant Librarian

Amazon.com to Acquire Audible.com

Another acquisition to end the month: Amazon.com to Acquire Audible.com

Innovation in a book about Innovation

OK, I'm sure it's not really an innovation, but it was the first time I'd ever seen it, and it makes so much sense!  I just finished reading The myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun, and instead of offering the standard semi-useful bibliography, at the end of this book he provides a ranked bibliography.  The bibliography shows the books from which he took the most notes first.  What a great idea!

It's a really quick read, only 150 pages of actual text, and it did a really good job of sparking some ideas as I was reading.  The colophon is not to be missed either ;-)

Technorati Tags: Innovation, Berkun, bibliographies

ViewletBuilder 4 for the Mac - now with sound!

Update: whoops, I originally posted this calling it VB 5, but was contacted by Qarbon who pointed out it's actually version 4 (they're still working on 5 for the Mac)

Well hot on the heels of my complaint about not having a tool to edit .mov files, Qarbon shared with me a beta  of ViewletBuilder 4 for the Mac.  Now, they've had a Mac version out for some time, but also for some time the version they had didn't support sound.  They appear to have that bug licked.

While I'm no longer a huge fan of the ViewletBuilder / Captivate model of taking individual screen shots and then animating them after the fact, I do certainly appreciate the ability to mark up the screencast.  Here's a long (15 minutes!) walk through of how to build and annotate a very  basic screencast using ViewletBuilder 5 on the Mac.  If you want to actually see what's on the screen, look for the full screen button in the upper right.

Qarbon offers free hosting for two Viewlets of any size.  Educational pricing for ViewletBuilder is $199.

You can watch the actual Viewlet I built here. (there doesn't appear to be a way to embed)

Ovid responds to customer desires on tab naming

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to use EZProxy to change the default wording on the tabs in the new OvidSP interface.  Seems we weren't alone in desiring a better name for the Ovid Syntax tab, and Ovid reports that on Friday, Feb 1 they're going to automagically switch the name of that tab to Advanced Ovid Search for everyone.  You can of course still use the EZProxy trick to rename it anything you want at all.  I'm looking forward to April 1 ;-)


Technorati Tags: OvidSP

What's actually missing from the Mac Screencasting options

...is the ability to edit the recording.  Specifically adding callouts; arrows, highlights, text overlay...  that sort of stuff.  I now have copies of both iShowU and SnapzProX, and they both do a really nice job of recording the screen.  Lots of variables like size of capture, frame rate, sound or not, but neither offers the ability to edit the recording, other than to pop it in to Quicktime Pro or iMovie to add titles, transitions, or trim and cut.  Is anyone aware of a Mac product that allows a .mov file to be annotated with highlights, text boxes, arrows, etc?  Can't wait for Techsmith to step in here...

Brrrr

That's C on the left and F on the right.  Wind chill on the way to work was reported as -49 C

Actually not complaining; it's been a very mild winter until right about now...

KBPublisher FAQ database at our library

Today we launched our new FAQ database here at the U of Calgary.  We're now using KBPublisher, an open-source product introduced to me by Chad Boeninger at Ohio U.  In addition to being searchable, and thus way better than one of those long lists with anchor tags, the neatest feature in the whole thing is that should someone decide they do want to go ahead and submit a question, as they're typing in the form KBPublisher watches the words they type and before they can hit the submit button, suggests answers that might actually already exist to answer the question.  If it's wrong, they can still go ahead and submit.

Here's a quick overview of our implementation:


Technorati Tags: KBPublisher, FAQs

JungleDisk for online storage

Does anyone have any experience with JungleDisk for online storage?  Really would love to hear some real-world feedback.

Thanks!


Technorati Tags: JungleDisk, AmazonS3

OEDb's Online College Rankings 2008

No mention of the importance of libraries here, but the Online Education Database has just released OEDb's Online College Rankings 2008. 

For each college, we gathered data for eight different metrics — acceptance rate, financial aid, graduation rate, peer Web citations, retention rate, scholarly citations, student-faculty ratio, and years accredited.

Pleased to see the institution where I cut my Distance Ed teeth, Nova Southeastern University, ranked at #4.  Wow, look at the number of Peer Web Citations they got - I'm guessing that raised them quite a bit!

Alchemist author increases sales by pirating his own book

Neat stuff!

"Paulo Coelho, the best-selling author of “The Alchemist”, is using BitTorrent and other filesharing networks as a way to promote his books. His publishers weren’t too keen on giving away free copies of his books, so he’s taken matters into his own hands.  He’s convinced — and rightly so — that letting people download free copies of his books helps sales."

Full post at TorrentFreak.


Technorati Tags: P2P, Books, Sharing

An update on the ANTS project

Hey, remember the ANTS screencast-sharing project?    I've stepped way back from it since assuming my new duties here at the U of C, but it's still going strong, and has undergone some major changes / improvements.    Here's an update that was sent to the COPPUL Distance Education group:

As many of you are aware, we updated our Wiki last spring and we notified this group.  Since then, we have been publicizing it outside of COPPUL and as a result we now have over 50 people registered on the ANTS Wiki.  One reason that we are atracting more and more attention is the contributions made by  our DE group (thank you very much!). Another reason we are growing is due to new contributions coming from outside of COPPUL.  Each time a new tutorial comes up, we are posting them on the ALA Information Literacy Listserv in order to generate interest in the project. It seems to be working.

Interest in the Wiki is also increasing due to many of the Wiki's features
that we are marketing as well.  They allow allow us to create more of a
community on the Wiki.  In particular individuals can:

1. Create individual profiles.

2. Send messages to individuals when they view their profiles

3. Take part in a Discussion Forum.  (It is hoped that the Forum will be used by people interested   in the uses of Shockwave Flash and Building Tutorials... that it will be a community of people who share what they know with others.)

4. Set up their profile to recieve notifications via E-mail and updates about Site activity (by setting up a Watchlist).

5. Encourage others to participate by using its Invite Others feature.

6. Post to the Wiki any time they want to Adopt a Tutorial, update our list
of tutorials for development, etc.

If you have not already done so, it is a good time to register for our new
Wiki and set up a profile.  I have recieved messages from about 4 new members.  Two of them were Distance Education Librarians.  So it is a good community to be a part of.

Both our old ANTS team members, as well as new team members, are also busy
working on several new innitiatives including:

1. A wonderful new site to host our tutorials with a lot of push technology
and sharing technology.  We will tell you more about it as it nears completion.

2. Paul Betty (at Regis University) is experimenting with using Google Analytics to measure Captivate Tutorial use and he will be discussing this at the OCLS conference in March. So look for it if you are attending.

3. Richard Baer (of Camosun College) is having students view different tutorials and provide feedback about what works well and less well.  He is just starting, but already we are getting some interesting feedback that we will share with the group when we have more data.

4. Bill Badke is now focusing on doing Information Literacy Tutorials. He also has agreed to oversee a working group devoted to working on Information Literacy within the ANTS project. It would look at what needs to be created, issues related to Information Literacy and Tutorials, etc.  A second group (focused on the Technology) will oversee the Wiki, Dspace, and the New site. This will allow us to bring specialized knowledge to different aspects of the project.

In December we also added a third new member to the group:  Duncan Dixon of Trinity Western University. Duncan created our CINAHL tutorials and is (along with Paul Betty and Richard Baer) helping with the new site. So we would like to welcome him and thank him for assisting with the project.  We would also like to thank Paul Betty and Richard Baer for the time and energy they have devoted to the project thus far.

As you are aware, the project team did grow this fall. I would like to say that we expanded it for two reasons:

1. To help with many technological develpments that require more hands. In particular, we needed people with expertise in Captivate, Camtasia, Wikis, and Broadcasting sites.  This expertise is important and whenever someone clearly had it, we felt it was important to include them in the project (be they a COPPUL or non-COPPUL Librarian.)

2. We are a project that is now open to non-COPPUL members, and having non-COPPUL members on the actual team, was a way to reinforce that we are more than just a COPPUL project.  This in turn encourages others to participate in this project via contributions.

More works still needs to be done and more help - and ideas about how to improve the project - is always welcome.  To begin however, do take the time to register for the ANTS Wiki (http://ants.wetpaint.com/ ) and post if you have issues related to online tutorials.

Cheers,

Carmen Kazakoff-Lane

Library 2.0 Initiatives in Academic Libraries and wiki

Just learned that the new ACRL book Library 2.0 Initiatives in Academic Libraries has an accompanying wiki.  And of course Meredith has a website where she constantly refreshes links for her book, Social Software in Libraries.  Neat ways to keep traditional print current!

Bibliography on Mobile Devices in Distance Education

Michele Reid posted the attached bibliography from the Midwinter Discussion Group session to the OFFCAMP list, and it's reposted here with permission.

 

Incorporating Screencasts In Online Teaching

From The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 8, No 3 (2007),   ISSN: 1492-3831 - Incorporating Screencasts In Online Teaching by Elaine Peterson.

I'm linking to the abstract page instead of the full text because from there you can choose HTML, PDF, or to listen to the article as an mp3, which sounds surprisingly good to me - neat option!

Abstract
Despite success in teaching the class ‘Organization of Information in a School Library Media Center’ (EDCI 545) online, one component continued to be a problem for students, the Dewey Decimal Classification System. To supplement the instruction, a set of simple screencasts was developed to assist distance education students. Benchmarks were established and a beta test conducted. It is expected that the next online class of students will have increased success because of the addition of screencasts. It is suggested that screencasts be considered as an additional tool for online learners across other disciplines, particularly when using databases that have layered sets of information, requiring multiple mouse clicks.

Interesting to me that while the author used links to the websites of the products she mentioned, the literature review only looked for traditional print literature, despite the fact that there's plenty of evidence in the blogosphere of libraries using screencasts for instruction...



Technorati Tags: screencasting, distance_education

ProQuest Acquires RefWorks

There sure seem to be a log of acquisitions lately!  Official PDF version, or:

BETHESDA, MD, USA (January 18, 2008) – RefWorks, LLC, the leading provider of a web-based research management, writing, and collaboration tool, has announced that it has been acquired by ProQuest, a Cambridge Information Group company.

With over 900 institutions worldwide and over 1M registered users, RefWorks has been successful in facilitating the advancement of scholarly work for researchers around the world and will continue to do so. ProQuest, with the development of their Research Solutions Businesses (Serials Solutions, COS and Dissertations), continues to focus on enhancing their research solutions offerings--- which directly aligns with our vision, mission and values. What does all this mean? RefWorks will be merged with the COS business which is part of Research Solutions Businesses. COS Scholar Universe is renowned for its networking capability, which provides direct access to more than 1.4 million active researchers from around the world in over 200 disciplines. With RefWorks and COS joining forces, researchers will be able to turn to one source for tools that help them identify colleagues with similar research interests, establish alliances and manage joint research projects. We see great synergy between the RefWorks and COS products that will allow us to better assist the researcher through their workflow process.

Externally there will be no changes to the product names and no changes from a customer perspective. We are enthusiastic about the opportunities this merger affords and confident of even greater success with our products.

Technorati Tags: ProQuest, Refworks

Running Meebo as an application (no web browser needed!)

OK gang, the biggest strength of Meebo, that it's web-based, has also been the biggest strike against it.  For those of us who are using it as a service, it's a bit of a pain to remember to fire it up, and to have the web browser open.  Accidentally shut down the page or have a browser crash and you lose the service.

Worry no more, here's how you can run Meebo completely independent of your web browser, as a desktop application!

You need to download a small application from Mozilla called Prism.  Did I mention it's available for Windows, Mac AND Linux?  :-)  Prism allows a web service (any website) to run in its own window, available with a desktop or startup menu shortcut.  Because it's in a separate window, you don't even have to have a web browser open to access Meebo, and because it can launch as an application,  you can add it to your startup routine so it starts with your OS, just like Trillian or Pidgin can.

It's incredibly easy to install and run; I'll be using it heavily starting tomorrow at the office.  Here it is in action (email and RSS subscribers will have to click through to view):

While this should run on Leopard, there's another application specifically built for the newest OS called Fluid.  Someone try it out and let me know how it works, kay?

How to embed a MeeboMe widget on a Mac desktop

Yesterday I posted a screencast about how to embed a MeeboMe widget right on the desktop using ActiveDesktop.  While surfing around to see who else had made use of this, I found a link to a Flickr page from late 2005 where someone was using ActiveDesktop to show their Meebo account, and in the comments was a suggestion for a Mac application called WebDesktop that does more or less the same thing on OS X.  It's not quite as good, IMHO, in that upon minimizing your active windows you have to click one more time to make the webdesktop become operational, but still, you don't have to have your browser running, and this could easily be made to run upon startup (though of course the Mac won't be starting up nearly as often ;-).  Just something else to experiment with.

Here's your screencast (aggregators and mail subscribers will have to click through to view):

Some screencasting news

I'm pleased to see Greg Notess has been posting again at the LibCasting blog.  The other day he pointed to FreeScreencast.com, which offers the software and online hosting, much like Jing.  I haven't tried FreeScreencast or TipCam, which does the exact same thing.  There are examples on each of their sites though, and the output looks pretty good - check them out!


Technorati Tags: Screencasting, Jing, FreeScreencast.com, TipCam

How to embed a MeeboMe widget on your desktop

Hey, I'm excited about this one!  At a meeting yesterday we were considering additional places we could stick our MeeboMe widget (you may recall we've had it embedded in our catalogue since the beginning of October, 2007).  Someone wondered if we could embed it on the desktop, and I recalled that Microsoft has something called Active Desktop that allows websites to be displayed on the desktop.  So this morning I did some quick checking and it works! 

So first you'll need to create a MeeboMe widget, and then you'll need to create a basic html file on your hard drive, OR you can point to a live website.  Just remember that folks will still want to use their desktop icons, so if you do use a live webpage, make sure it's not too cluttered.

Information on how to turn on Active Desktop is here.

And, um, that's it!

Here it is in action:

 

I don't know if there might be any security or other implications for this - haven't yet checked on that...

Update: My colleague David pointed out that we have over 200 machines in our InfoCommons, and wonders what having them always connected to our Meebo account might mean.  Good question - does anyone have any idea if there's a limit to the number of folks who can be simultaneously connected to a Meebo account?  I'm going to check their FAQ's and maybe send them an email.  Still, the above should work well for a small library...

Update #2: The Meebo Wiki says 100 people can be simultaneously connected via widgets:
"How many people can talk to me at any given time? Is there a limit?
Right now we have set the limit to 100 people who can see you online through your widget. In the future, we may make it a preference to help you do some crowd control. If you’ve got 100 peeps IMing you at any given time, you’re pretty popular and might wanna hit that Invisible mode! You can also disable a widget in the meebo pref pane."

Public Ivy, baby!

Well there's no library information included in the rankings, but I was proud to see my undergrad alma mater, SUNY Geneseo, ranked #1 in Kiplinger's 100 Best College Values of 2008.  They were looking at both cost and academic success.  Go Knights!  :-)



Technorati Tags: Kiplinger, Geneseo

Online Workshop: Building a Community that Values Academic Integrity

You might be interested in this online workshop from the Center for Intellectual Property at UMUC ($150)

Building a Community that Values Academic Integrity
Dates: February 25 - March 7, 2008 (early registration by February 8 )
Moderators: Gary Pavela, M.A., J.D., Director of Judicial Programs and Student Ethical Development, University of Maryland -- College Park & Kimberly Bonner, J.D., Executive Director, Center for Intellectual Property, University of Maryland University College

Studies show that establishing a community of shared academic values fosters academic integrity in the classroom. However, establishing that community may be more difficult when students adopt the values of a digital "remix" culture that challenges the traditional understanding of authorship. How do institutions foster academic integrity values in light of changing cultural norms? Are there special techniques and tools required? Are the best tools to use in preventing academic dishonesty "technical" like Turnitin.com? And are there additional legal and ethical issues involved when using technical measures to prevent academic dishonesty?

Goals for the course:

• Examine faculty and student attitudes about academic integrity
• Examine several strategies to foster academic integrity and discourage dishonesty in teaching and learning
• Evaluate the importance of building trust in academic environments and identify key factors in achieving and sustaining trust online and face-to-face
• Review some of the currently available online tools helpful in discouraging academic dishonesty
• Evaluate the legal issues involved in using those tools to foster academic integrity
• Consider the educational tools that can be used to remediate students after academic dishonesty occurs

Another way for libraries to advertise in Facebook

Via Tame The Web, a Flickr account of one library's use of Facebook ads to simply promote the library page in Facebook.  The caption on the picture is, "64310 imprints, 67 clicks and 15 fans".


Technorati Tags: Facebook

Watch how Molly McDonald makes a screencast

A neat post from Molly McDonald of DemoGirl.com showing exactly how she creates a screencast using Camtasia Studio 4.

Utilizing WebQuests for Information Literacy Instruction in Distance Education

Haven't actually looked at this article myself...

Author: Blummer, Barbara
Source: College & Undergraduate Libraries, Volume 14, Number 3, 18 December 2007 , pp. 45-62(18)

Abstract:
The increasing use of problem-based learning in higher education affords librarians new avenues for promoting the development of information literacy skills among students. Information literacy instruction supports problem-based learning activities by providing students with skills to locate relevant resources for developing solutions to these exercises. The author created three WebQuests (together with tutorials) aimed at promoting faculty-librarian partnerships to deliver information literacy instruction through a problem-based learning approach in the context of course work in a distance learning environment. These problem-based learning WebQuests can be adapted to various disciplines as well as to traditional learning environments. Lastly, these WebQuests promote the development of information literacy skills in students as well as increase their exposure to problem-based learning. doi:10.1300/J106v14n03_03

Call for Proposals for Access 2008

Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Date: October 1-3, 2008 (Hackfest: Oct 1; Conference: Oct 2-4)
CFP Deadline: Friday, February 22, 2008
URL: http://access2008.mcmaster.ca

Access is Canada's premier library technology conference, featuring a single stream of sessions that deal with technology planning, development, challenges and solutions. We are now accepting proposals for prepared talks on the following topics (other ideas are more than welcome):

    * customized web applications and search interfaces
    * open source software
    * national and provincial/state-wide consortia technology initiatives
    * information policy
    * digital and social media
    * library catalogue innovations
    * digitization projects
    * institutional repositories
    * end-user searching behaviours
    * protocols and metadata

...or anything else suitably geeky, innovative and/or awe-inspiring! Sessions are usually 45 minutes or 1 hour in length. Proposals should include:

    * your name, title, institutional affiliation, contact information, blog/website URL
    * 100 word (max) abstract describing your proposed presentation
    * co-presenters you will (or hope to) present with

Submission Procedures:

    * deadline for submission is February 22, 2008.
    * send your proposal to Amanda Etches-Johnson, Program Chair, at etchesa AT mcmaster.ca
    * each submission will be acknowledged and all presenters will be notified of the status of their proposal by April 15, 2008.
    * if you'd simply like to recommend topics and/or speakers (other than yourself), feel free to get in touch!

Depending on the number of submissions, we can't promise that every proposal will be accepted. However, we will have sessions set aside for Lightning/Thunder talks, which provide an informal opportunity to share your ideas with your peers.

For more information about Access, see the Access 2007 website. Alternatively, feel free to get in touch with the members of the Program Planning Committee:

Amanda Etches-Johnson
User Experience Librarian, McMaster University
etchesa AT mcmaster.ca

Jenn Horwath
Virtual Branch Manager, Hamilton Public Library
jhorwath AT hpl.ca


Technorati Tags: ACCESS2008, Access2008, Access08