The Distant Librarian

Peter Rukavina - Canada's Superpatron?

I've followed Peter Rukavina's weblog for a number of years.  Can't quite remember how I decided he was a kindred spirit - it might have been when I was researching my newly-discovered Croatian heritage and I somehow learned he are one too.  Anyway, he's a programmer geek who appreciates libraries, and from time to time comments on them.  They seem to be at the front of his brain right now though, as he posts twice about some damn good ideas / hacks to improve the service of his local (or any) library.

First up is More fun with Dynix OPAC, PHP and XML, in which he reinvents part of Library Elf and offers the PHP source code so you can do the same with your Dynix catalogue.  Wonder if it can work with Sirsi catalogues?

But even cooler, IMHO, is his next post, in which he laments the lack of an online ILL request form and suggests that libraries should implement a Digg-style recommendation system that would allow the community to vote up the requested items they'd most like to see added to the collection: Digg + Local Library Purchases. 

I love it - who's going to build it first?

Peter, do you know Ed Vielmetti?  You guys should get together, methinks!


Technorati Tags: Digg, Libraries, ILL, Dynix, Superpatron

Some Thoughts on the Future of Print

I just finished reading Print is Dead: Books in our Digital Age, by Jeff Gomez.  It wasn't a terribly well-argued book, IMHO (Walt Crawford has taught me to be very wary of large numbers of global statements), but damn did it spark a copious number of questions and ideas for me.

The basic premise of the book is that it's the content, not the medium, that matters, and for the most part I agree.  Gomez posits that it's inevitable that people will shift to reading books in some electronic medium, and that publishers aren't paying enough attention to this inevitability.

I got the distinct impression that the spark for the book was ignited by the quote  from Hesse's Steppenwolf (too long to include here) Gomez uses to close the book in the afterward, which I believe kind of dilutes his entire argument by degrading the quality and utility of the delivery mechanisms around ebooks, but there you go.

I liked Gomez's explanation about why digital copies of ebooks (specifically those that wouldn't include DRM) shouldn't cost way less than their print counterparts, an opinion I've always had.  He points out that the bulk of the cost of a book isn't in its material and shipping costs, but in the costs of editing, promotion, and related quality enhancing features.  In fact Gomez suggests that people might be willing to pay more for an ebook if they truly can read it on any device, access it instantly, search it, and give it to their friends when they're done with it.  That last option seems unlikely to me, but we'll see.  Note, the cost of the Amazon Kindle edition of this book is $9.99, while the print edition is $16.47.

Reading this book made me think back to the minor brouhaha over Kevin Kelly's 2006 New York Times article, Scan this Book.  That argument seemed to mostly be around the different ways fiction and non-fiction are read, a topic that is briefly addressed in Gomez's book.  I think arguments probably really should centre around these genres though; I think this book would've been much stronger had it made the arguments around non-fiction exclusively.  But it wouldn't sell as well then...

It also reminded me of the innovative things O'Reilly media is attempting with many of its offerings, including the ability to buy PDFs for a little less than the print, and individual chapters (DRM-free) for $3.99.  See for instance the store page for last month's recommended title, The Myths of Innovation.  And also tweaked my memory of an article from Technology Review in 2005 where Jason Epstein described what must have become the Espresso POD machine.

And I'm afraid this part may get lost down here at the bottom of the post, but nicely tying all these thoughts together for me was Larry Lessig's 2007 talk at the TED conference on How creativity is being strangled by the law:

(incidentally, the TED conference is held in Monterey, CA, and I recognize the stage Lessig is standing on as the Steinbeck Forum in the Portola Plaza; I spoke on that same stage during Internet Librarian in 2006 - I don't suppose I can say I shared a stage with Larry Lessig, can I? ;-)

Some other related stuff I came across while reading the book, if you want to dive deeper:

• The Slow Reading blog, by John Miedema.
• 30 mostly spurious benefits of ebooks, from Off the Mark, in response to:
• Read an e-book week (March 2-8, 2008)
• I guess I should really re-subscribe to if:book!

OSX Screenshot Showdown - Jing vs Skitch

I almost didn't bother with this post after running a quick Google search on Jing vs Skitch and finding nearly 1,000 results, but I went through a fair number and couldn't find anything that actually compared them side by side, so I went ahead.

Both Jing and Skitch are free (currently) programs for Mac OS X that allow the user to take and then annotate a static screen shot.  But they each do a whole lot more as well.  Here's a chart comparing some of the features of each:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Feature		Jing	Skitch
Remote Hosting		Free	Free
Save locally		X	X
Upload to:
	Flickr	X	X
	FTP	X	X
	.Mac		X
Send to Bluetooth			X
Send to Printer			X
Attach to Email			X
File Format Outputs
	PNG	X	X
	JPG		X
	TIF		X
	PDF		X
	SWF	For video
	SVG		X
Video Capture		X
iSight Capture (still)			X
Annotation
	Text	X	X
	Arrows	X	X
	Highlight	X	X
	Boxes	X	X
	Circles		X
	Pencil		X
	Line		X
	Erase and Cut		X
	Fill Area		X
	Undo	X	X
Effects
	Shadow		X
	Flip		X
	Rotate		X
Customized hotkeys		X	X
Resize after capture			X
Drag snapshot into application			X

So on options, Skitch is the clear winner, but that ability to record quick video with Jing is a damn good reason to keep it around.  Plus it's important to note that I'm kind comparing apples and oranges here, as Jing never set out to be an all-inclusive screen capture product. 

There's another important thing to consider too, and something a table can't capture (ha!) is the usability of each product.  You know I can't resist a quick screencast, so here's how I use each one:

 

Technorati Tags: Jing, Skitch, OSX

Schedule now available for 13th Off-Campus Library Services Conference

The schedule has been posted, as has workshop info and registration.  Looks like some really good stuff!


Technorati Tags: OCLSC, OCLSC08

A few thoughts in favour of the Google Books project

Charles Edward Smith has a brief piece in Educause Quarterly in which he points out why he thinks Google Books Search is a good thing.

A curious amount of unease surrounds Google's initiative to scan
thousands of books in major research libraries and make them available
online. Although I understand the concerns, I don't entirely sympathize
with them...

Technorati Tags: Google_Book_Search

Wonderful Skullcandy Warranty

I have no idea how we can co-opt this in library land, but I wanted to share with you the absolutely wonderful-sounding warranty offered by the manufacturer of my newest pair of earphones, Skullcandy:

Skullcandy is proud to provide he best product warranty in the industry.  If this product should fail in your lifetime, we will replace it at no charge.  If the product is damaged by aggressive music listeners sliding a rail, sliding down the emergency ramp of your aircraft, slammed in your locker, slammed in your car door, run over by a car, running into a wall, getting run out of town, mountain biking, road biking, sky diving..., blown up in an accidental experimentation with flammable substances, or damaged in any other every day experience, it means you are living your life the way we want out product used!  In these, or any other damaging events, we will replace the product for a 50% discount from retail.  -- Love Skullcandy.

Oh yeah, and I really like the headphones too :-) 

First Impressions of ScreenFlow

Heh, I forgot we now have a machine in our office with Leopard installed, so this AM I sat down for 20 minutes with ScreenFlow.  It's pretty nice, and the editing features are really slick.  Very nice callouts and zooms and mirror effects.  But no text can be added, which is a really big bummer.  Nor arrows.  And I'm sure you can add additional clips to compensate, but I didn't see any way to add a title screen during my inaugural run.  It was stable for me on one try though.  I only saw variants of .mov files as the output, but you can upload those to YouTube or Viddler for conversion.  More when I have more time, including some sample screencasts.


Technorati Tags: ScreenFlow, OSX, Screencasting

Screencast Editing on the Mac - ScreenFlow

Just a couple of weeks ago I lamented that what was really missing from all the screencasting options for the Mac was the ability to easily edit post-capture.  Well folks, we may have turned a corner.  Vara Software has just released ScreenFlow, which sounds as though it does everything I want it to.  The only drawback for the moment is that it only runs on Leopard (OS X.5), which I don't yet have.  Comments left in the couple of reviews I've read suggest that it may be a little buggy still, but I'd love to try it out.  The sample screencast on their site looks really nice...


Technorati Tags: screencasting, ScreenFlow

Harvard faculty votes to post research online

"Harvard University's arts and science faculty voted unanimously yesterday to post their scholarly articles and research online, where they would be available for free to the public, despite concerns that the move would affect the quality of research." - full story from the Boston Globe.

Some interesting quotes in the article, like this one from a VP at the Association of American Publishers, "This is a vendor-customer dispute over price," Adler said. "It doesn't surprise us that all libraries feel their budgets are far less than desirable, but that's a reality the educational community faces."


Technorati Tags: Open_Access, Harvard

CANHEIT 2008 Call for Participation

The Canadian Higher Education and Information Technology Conference (CANHEIT) is a unique event, focusing on those IT issues that are of Canadian significance and of primary interest to universities and community colleges. This annual conference brings together senior administrators, managers, and staff who are responsible for the management and evolution of their campus information systems, learning systems, and infrastructure.

This year, the University of Calgary has the privilege of hosting the sixth annual CANHEIT conference to be held in Calgary, Alberta from June 15 to 18, 2008. "On the EDGE" is the theme for CANHEIT 2008.  It allows for fellow technological trailblazers to share their adventures, and help each other to safely traverse new frontiers in the field of Information Technologies.  It is our hope that “On the EDGE” will encourage innovative thought and discussion among IT colleagues at CANHEIT 2008.

We invite you to present at the CANHEIT 2008 conference. There are three presentation formats to suit your topic and style: standard presentations, panel sessions, and "birds-of-a-feather" (BoF) forums. First-time presenters are always welcome!

The program streams are:
- Security and Infrastructure
- Innovative Technologies and Methods
- Support Models in Today’s Environment
- Management and Strategy
- Research and Learning

To submit your proposal, please visit the CANHEIT 2008 website: http://canheit.ucalgary.ca/proposalsubmission

To review the proposal guidelines see http://canheit.ucalgary.ca/guidelines

The deadline for submitting your proposal abstract (maximum of 100 words) is Friday, February 29, 2008.

Additional Conference Information

- Conference Registration will begin on March 15, 2008.  Check the website for further details: http://canheit.ucalgary.ca/registration
- If you are interested in volunteering at the 2008 CANHEIT Conference, please send an email to canheit.2008@ucalgary.ca

Thank you, from your CANHEIT 2008 Program Committee.

Distant/Remote Librarian Employment?

Dear Hive Mind,  I just got an interesting question which I was unable to answer, and wondered if any of you had any suggestions.  The paraphrased question is,

"I have an MLIS, but reside several hours away from the closest university.  I remember hearing about these remote librarian employment opportunities while in Library School. I first went to the ALA website, but no luck. Do you have any  suggestions on entering this field and identifying the colleges, universities and possibly corporations who employ our services?"

I know some big DE schools have librarians in specific off-site locations, but is anyone aware of anyone who hires librarians regardless of their physical location?

Thanks!

As of yet, no copyright bill has been introduced...

As mentioned last week, Industry Minister Jim Prentice spoke at the U of C on Friday, February 8, 2008.  He didn't end up speaking about copyright, though the audience sure did.  His topic was on policy making around greenhouse gas reductions, but 5 of the 8 questions asked were about copyright law.  He seemed to take them in stride, though got a little curt at the end.  I was going to ask one too, but by then thought it'd be getting close to harassment...

Here's the entire talk (51:00) with my comments inserted along the way.  I highlighted words he said that I wanted to apply to his work on the copyright bill; words he told his soon-to-be-lawyers audience, like integrity and consultation, but which don't seem to apply to the topic of copyright reform.  If you watch the whole thing, or skip to the comments towards the end, the reason for the title of this post will be apparent.

Somehow when I encoded this video to flv I flipped it, which is why what you see here is reverse of the pix below.

I recorded this with my Macbook and a USB headset mic attached - had to really pump up the volume on the edit, which went through quite a process.  As you may know, the Macbook camera only points towards the keyboard, so I used a Huckleberry mirror from Mungai Mirrors to shoot towards the front.  Unfortunately, the Macbook model really doesn't work very well - pointing pretty high up.  Fortunately, the box in which the mirror is stored is just the right size for propping up the laptop and getting the right angle :-)  Makes typing a little tough, but at least I got the recording.  (looks like the model for the Macbook Pro is much better, IMHO)

Michael Geist (who wasn't actually there) has some thoughts on the Q&A period as well...

EZProxy and OvidSP Round 2 - Removing the Tip Box

Last month I wrote about how to use EZProxy's find and replace feature to change the unhelpful text on a database tab to something more helpful:EZProxy Find and Replace: when the vendor says they can't...  Well the Medical Librarians at U of C had another request; to see if we could get rid of that Tip Box that appears after a slight delay.

The tip box is annoying because the delay in its appearing seems to contribute to the jumpiness of the screen - which is the real problem. There's a delay somewhere and I've seen my students use the system and boxes they tick, or in entering the search strategy, keystrokes don't register as something happens behind the scene and the whole screen jumps around. Tip box or not, they'll have to fix that. I'm hearing it as the #1 complaint on the med librarians' listservs.

I asked Ovid tech support if it could be removed, and they said sorry, nope, even though that's requested even more than the tab name change was!

So again, EZProxy to the rescue.  This one's not quite as elegant, as I was trying to wrap it up on Friday afternoon, but I did some hunting and pecking and learned that there's a javascript being called (after a delay) that's responsible for the Tip Box.  Break that script, and voila, no more Tip Box.

So this time in your EZProxy config file you can use:

T Ovid (or whatever we're calling it)
U http://www.ovid.com (whatever)
DJ ovid.com  (whatever)
Find advertising.js   tips01342.js
Replace advertisin.js   tips0134x.js

Told you it was kinda ugly, but basically we're renaming the called javascript to one that doesn't exist, and thus it doesn't get called.  We tried replacing it with a blank (nothing) but it didn't work, so as soon as we found something that did, we stuck with it.

Here are the before and after pix:

Before:

After:

And no more screen jumping.

Canadian Copyright updates

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has just released a really good 11-page document called The Copyright Act and Academic Staff (February 2008) (pdf).  It discusses what they feel needs to be addressed of concern to Higher Education in any upcoming copyright legislation.

And on that note, rumour has it that tomorrow will be the day that new legislation is introduced!  Industry Minister Jim Prentice happens to be speaking on the U of C campus tomorrow, and I'll be there, possibly to hear him announce what is likely to be a pretty controversial bill.  Oddly, the Order Paper says the bill would be introduced today, while the Projected Order of Business makes no mention of it.

Stay tuned!


Technorati Tags: copyright, DMCA

Random Tuesday Tech Tip #5 - Aardvark Firefox Extension

The other day I came across a Firefox extension called Aardvark that makes it really easy to clean up websites to print, or even to read online w/o lots of advertisements and fluff around the text.  Here's a quick demo of it in action:

Docutek vs IM

Dan Sich from the U of Waterloo has posted the slides from a presentation he just gave at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference.  The title of his talk was IM a Librarian: the Meebo, Skype-Unyte solution, and one really interesting slide kind of caught my eye:



Just FYI, check out the rest of his presentation for some good ideas and links on the subject.

Criteria for tenure and promotion: a review of practices among members of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries

Just posted to our institutional repository is a brief report (13 pages plus an appendix) entitled Criteria for tenure and promotion: a review of practices among members of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.  The abstract reads as follows:

This study reviews current practice relating to tenure and promotion to the highest rank by examining those libraries closest to our situation, the members of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. A search of the literature indicates that reviews of tenure and promotion criteria and practices for Canadian academic libraries are rare. In 1995 Gloria Leckie and Jim Brett undertook a review of the key terms and conditions for librarians found in collective agreements of libraries belonging to the Canadian Association of University Teachers. Their findings indicate that practices vary widely with no consistent approach across the board. A number of factors exerting upward pressure on criteria and promotion for University of Calgary librarians led me to investigate whether this upward pressure was a widespread phenomenon, and therefore whether criteria and processes for tenure and promotion had subsequently been affected. Results from this investigation are compared to the initial 1995 survey. For comparison purposes, a literature survey was conducted and findings are summarized.

Technorati Tags: Tenure, Libraries, Canada

5 web-based file-transfer solutions

The Wired Campus has collected a list of web-based file transfer solutions - you know, for when you want to send someone a file that's too big for an email attachment...


Technorati Tags: transfer, attachments, files