Work life's been such a whirlwind I forgot to let y'all know that as of May 1 I'm now officially the Public Services Systems Librarian here at the University of Calgary. I've been filling the role since last October and have been having a blast, so I'm really tickled that I get to stay in the position. Big things to complete this summer - launch Federated Search, and migrate website to Drupal. Glad I've got great folks around me to help!
I'm not changing anything on the blog, and I'll still be keeping an eye on the world of DE, so I hope you stick around for the reads.
Holy crap! Article from The Chronicle of Higher Ed describing how the word 'abortion' is now a stopword in the Popline database. Meaning you can't search for it. That's insane! oooh, except if you go now, you CAN search on that word. Yay for the interwebs!
The Krafty Librarian reports that in response to customer feedback, OvidSP will be introducing some platform enhancements on Monday, March 31. Looks like some good tweaks, though no mention of the ability to tweak the OvidSP Tip box.
Cool! Not a program I would've watched ordinarily, but I'll be giving it a shot. Michael Geist points out that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation plans to freely release a high-resolution version of Canada's Next Great Prime Minister via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. And in a Naked Conversations moment, Tessa Sproule, CBC's Executive in Charge of Digital Programming, weighs in with a comment.
On a side note, I haven't visited the CBC's home page in a while - check out all the links for podcasts and oooh, the archives. Here's a piece from December 1979 - a Buyer's Guide to Digital Watches (one model even has an alarm!)
Techsmith is currently running a couple of brief surveys to find out what folks think are the most important features for their under-development-versions of SnagIt and Camtasia Studio for the Mac. Why not take a couple of minutes to let them know what you think:
I couldn't resist the headline when I saw that as part of the layoffs they were going to refocus on "providing answers to its core audience of women searching on... reference topics". ;-)
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.
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?
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)
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 ;-)
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!
"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."
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.
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! :-)
Earlier this week we switched to the new interface for OvidSP (an attempt, I believe, at integrating the Silver Platter (SP) platform into Ovid). It's nice, but the default configuration includes a Basic Search table, an Ovid Syntax tab, and a SilverPlatter Syntax tab. Ovid Syntax and SilverPlatter Syntax don't mean anything to our users, and in fact we didn't even include the latter in our configuration. But we wanted Ovid to change the text so the Ovid Syntax tab instead read Advanced Search. We were told that it was a popular request, but that they couldn't do it right now.
Meh. That's no good at all for our users. I remembered that EZProxy has a Find and Replace feature, but hadn't really explored it yet. Found this page on the Unofficial EZProxy Support Wiki and was off to the races. Making the tab say what we wanted it to say took all of two lines of code to be added to the EZProxy configuration file for Ovid:
T Ovid (or whatever we're calling it)
U http://www.ovid.com (whatever)
DJ ovid.com (whatever) Find Ovid Syntax
Replace Advanced Search
So if you can find the T, U, and DJ lines in your Ovid (now or soon to be OvidSP for you too) you can stick in the two lines of red code and find that all is magically well. Of course this means you can rename the tab whatever you want, and can rename other parts of the page as well. Could be fun come April Fool's Day! The other neat thing about this fix is that should Ovid change the tab themselves, our display will simply revert to their true and native display because EZProxy simply won't find the text string "Ovid Syntax" to replace!
Just before I went on vacation in the middle of December, Dan Sich at the U of Waterloo really hit his stride in experimenting with Hab.la as an alternative to MeeboMe widgets. When I returned from vacation I let his posts sit until I made the time to digest them, and today noticed this update:
Dan writes, "Bad news: a Hab.la staffer just confirmed for me that there is a cap on the number of users that can see any given widget at any given point in time. Currently that max number is 5... I believe this means that site-wide or OPAC-wide installation of the Hab.la script would be rather futile. Only 5 people could see the widget at any given point in time. OPACs and library websites both frequently get more than 5 users at a time."
Bummer. It's always nice to have alternatives, but it seems at this time, Hab.la isn't a viable one. Thanks for the legwork, Dan!
Search Engine is a CBC radio show, also available as a podcast. I just listened to a fascinating piece about the economy of gold farmers in World of Warcraft. 100,000 Chinese working in sweatshop conditions, killing monsters for gold in 12-hour shifts, so the people playing the game can spend some real money to buy the gold and advance more quickly in the game.
The summary of the show sounds a little dry, but I really recommend you give it a listen, it's really well done and I've been really pleased with each of the 27-minute episodes.
Search Engine is your open source to all the surprising and significant ways the Internet is transforming our world. Join us each week for a look at politics and culture through the lens of the Net.
I've never really made New Year's resolutions, but one thing my wife and I have decided to do this year is really tackle our debt and increase our retirement contributions. It'll be a tough year (or several) for a gadget junkie like me, but I'm committed (and now also in public!). I've been following a couple of personal finance blogs for a few months now, but just started digging a little deeper into the archives and tripped across this post which is nothing new to us, but is still nice to see, so I pass it on to you: Frugality in Practice: Using the Public Library.
Haven't yet laid eyes on the latest version of MS Word myself, but in reading a review of the upcoming MS Word 2008 for the Mac I noticed it will include built-in citation management tools. Went and checked and see that it's already available in the Windows version. Interesting.
