The Distant Librarian

Behind the scenes with IT at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics

Earlier this week a vendor flew a few folks involved with IT for the Taylor Family Digital Library out to Vancouver to see some cutting edge stuff.  One of the stops was the Headquarters of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) where we spent about a half hour with the VP for IT, about 40 minutes with the Manager of Photographic Services, and had lunch with the webmaster for the 2010 Olympic website.  While much of what we saw may not be directly applicable to our new library building, it was truly humbling to have the time of these people, and I'm really looking forward to the Olympics now so I can watch all this stuff succeed.

Much of the technology happening behind the scenes is in partnership with Atos Origin, a France-based global IT company I'd never heard of, but which is apparently huge.  Their colourful logo was everywhere throughout the HQ building.

Fascinating photography stuff.  Nick has built custom sleds that can be hooked up wirelessly to the fibre-optic cable that's been installed on the ski hills which will allow photographers to send their shots down the hill to their editors even before the skier has reached the bottom of the hill.  Folks aren't going to appreciate this because we're all so used to live video, but to get pro still shots from remote venues that quickly is really a huge technical achievement.

IT is really in tune with social media and user-generated content, and rather than fight a losing battle, will be collecting user-generated content (muchly from YouTube) in a "best of the web" portion of the site.  And of course you can become a fan on Facebook, or follow the Olympic Torch Relay on Twitter.  I learned a new word as they described how the licensing around video rights work: Coopetition.  I like it :-)  The website is built on the CoreMedia CMS and should prove to be mobile friendly.  They mentioned that by far the majority of their mobile traffic so far has come from iPhone or iPods, followed by various BlackBerry devices.  They said something about the Samsung Omnia as well, but I didn't note what.

One of the neatest things we saw all day was a sneak peek at a data-visualization tool they've built called the Medal Wheel.  In addition to the traditional tabular format displaying medalists, they'll be using an application built in JavaFX to allow users to dynamically drill through both historical and current medal results, slicing and dicing by country, gender, and sport as you go.

We learned about their simulation runs to ensure everything works well when the games begin.  They know things will go wrong, but think they're ready to handle anything that comes up.  Simulations include unplugging random machines, thowing a #2 person into a leadership position (your boss just went to the hospital), and similar, etc.  All servers are set up on site, then shrink-wrapped and sent out to the venues, where they're set up and should prove good to go.  There's a LOT of redundancy too.

Lots of neat multimedia stuff in the downtown Commerce and Media Centres at UBC Robson Square.

Final stop of the day was unrelated to the Olympics, but to talk about an installation of SunRay2 virtual client displays (aka thin clients).  I'm intrigued; they seem pretty good, but I would love to hear from any of you who have practical experience with these things - what are your thoughts please?

So that's how I spent my Tuesday.  The rest of the week has been quite a bit more low-key ;-)

Lifehacker readers pick the Five Best Screencasting Tools

I'm not sure if these are presented in rank order, but Lifehacker has a post reporting reader picks for the 5 best screencasting tools, which are: Screenflow, Jing, CamStudio, Camtasia Studio, ScreenToaster.  Check the comments for all sorts of additional nuggets too.

Tools for Remote Collaboration and Interaction

Karen at Library Web Chic has a great list of tools that she uses for remote collaboration and interaction.  I've used almost all of these, but will be playing with CamTwist and remembering to use my JungleDisk now :-)

Sharing

Dropbox - Random Tech Tip Thursday

I searched my archives and was surprised to learn I hadn't ever recommended Dropbox before.  I was reminded when I received an email from them letting me know they had a new video from CommonCraft (the xxx in Plain English folks) explaining how it all works.  In a nutshell, Dropbox is a cross-platform folder synchronization service.  After installing, you'll have a new folder on your Mac, Linux, and/or Windows machine (and iPhone) which syncs through the cloud, so if you pop a file into that folder on your PC, you can access it from your Mac or the web.  I use it daily - almost never use my USB key anymore.

The free service gives you 2GB of space, and you can upgrade to 50 or 100GB if you really need to.  I've been just fine with the 2GB.  If you decide to sign up, you can use my referral link and I'll get an extra 250MB, but you can sign up directly if you don't like that sort of thing :-)  Do sign up though, it's a great service!

Screencasting on the Mac - Screenflow 2 vs Camtasia:mac

Screenflow 2.0 came out earlier this week, so I now have production copies of it and Camtasia:mac.  I hadn't planned to do a head-to-head, but the opportunity arose today, so I took it.  Below you'll find copies of the same screencast I did to introduce Summon to our community.  The first was done in Screenflow, the second in Camtasia:mac.  Overall verdict?  Tie.  Screenflow got 1 point because it had easy mouse focus (dimming the background), but Camtasia's Smart Focus, while it needed a little tweaking, made the zooms easier to throw in.  Had I spent a few extra minutes I could've made the timing on the Camtasia zooms a little more uniform.  I understand Screenflow has a few audio extra features, but I didn't do anything with audio processing for this one.  Both were really quite simple to edit, chop out dead space, and add the closing text.  I don't think you'll go wrong with either one. 

Screenflow

Camtasia:mac

Screenflow did do a better job with the automatic upload to YouTube; it asked if I wanted to upload as HD, while Camtasia didn't, and the result with Camtasia's upload was quite a bit fuzzier.  I went back and used Camtasia's advanced export feature to export at 1024x720 H264, then uploaded manually to YouTub and the results were much better.  I also didn't do an equal job on the cropping and zooming, so they won't be identical in dimension.

Incidentally, I also ran across this collection of links on the Screenflow blog of other reviews of Screenflow, including some comparisons with Camtasia.

SirsiDynix developing an iPhone app

This isn't brand new news, but I was reminded of it today.  SirsiDynix is holding a contest to name their new iPhone app (to be released sometime in 2010 - no other date given). From the contest page:

SirsiDynix is excited to announce an iPhone application that will be available in 2010. The app will give iPhone users information and catalog access to libraries using Symphony. We need your help deciding what to name it.
If we choose your entry, you will win an iPod Touch!
The SirsiDynix iPhone app will offer quick access to your library catalog with a simple discovery interface

• Users find your library through GPS or on a global map
• Patrons can search their library's catalog, place holds, and view a list of their own checked out items
• Libraries can configure the set of available physical library locations and the policies tied to those locations, the library URL, and an image for each library

Any library staff member is eligible to submit up to five possible names. Help us get the word out - send this page to coworkers and peers.

To enter, fill out the form below before November 25, 2009. The winner will be announced in December.

Internet Librarian days 2 and 3

Didn't take many notes on day three, so I'm combining two days in this post.  Even so, it shouldn't be as long as the day one post.  I took these notes for myself, not necessarily for the blog, so they're most definitely not session reports - hopefully some useful links to explore.

I started the day at the Summon-sponsored breakfast where we heard Peter Jacso speak mostly about how awful Google Scholar metadata is, and how whenever he points out a series of errors, Google immediately removes them from the database.  Some examples include a vast number of records with author:methods or author:password  He's just published an article under the title of "Google Scholar's Ghost Authors" in Library Journal.  Good speaker who reminded me very much of my late Grandpa Pival :-)

Day 2 Keynote was an interview OF Paul Holdengraber, who hosts / moderates / interviews people for the Live from NYPL program - I want to search for audio of these - they should be great. (update: This lecture series is available in audio and video with transcripts AND Conversation Portraits in iTunes)  Start at http://www.nypl.org/LIVE .  Paul feels very strongly that the library should surprise people, not necessarily deliver only what people expect.

First Session - Dreaming, Designing and using mobile platforms - mostly overview stuff in this double session - I left after the first half to go listen to the UMich session (below).  Tom Ipri's slides available at http://www.slideshare.net/Tombrarian/mobile-library-platforms. Also check http://lifeonterra.com/m and compare it to the traditional version at http://lifeonterra.com/.  This is a project of the University of Montana, introduced by Jason Clark. I think Jason mentioned this site makes use of something called meta viewport, which I want to further explore.

Toby Greenwalt mentioned using a combination of Yaz + Z39.50 + PHP = mobile catalogue?  He also talked about using Shoutbomb for SMS alerts.  Red Laser, costs $1.99 in the iPhone app store, but has an SDK so someone may be able to get it to scan our library barcodes...

Designing for content-rich websites - UMich Library
John Creech is the Website Content Manager, Ken Varnum is Web Systems Manager
Use the regular libguides XML data dump to search via Solr, to integrate search results with those from the rest of the Drupal site.
Similar to UT Mississauga, librarians are listed in the catalogue by subject headings (call number ranges) and if there's a high-enough number of matches the subject librarian will appear along with the search results.  In Drupal, taxonomies are assigned to librarians.

An excellent tip picked up from Ken Varnum, Hathi is pronounced "Hot-ty" (that's 98% correct, but a lot better than the way I had been pronouncing it!  :-)

Marshall Breeding on SEO, then Andrew White from SUNY Stony Brook  Scholarly Stats, a service which is supposed to help with COUNTER and SUSHI stats.

Check out Splunk.com - appears to be a real memory and processor hog, but could provide some interesting slice and dice on ezproxy stats.

Kara Reuter, Extreme Makeover - user-centered design of http://worthingtonlibraries.org - they borrowed heavily from the museum world using a "visit" link to contain information about hours, parking, info, etc.   Their navigation choices are Visit / Borrow / Research / Interact / Calendar / About

Char Booth suggests replicating the OCLC User Perception reports at the local level - the survey instruments should be available.  "The more you like libraries, the more likely you are to like library technology" NOT "younger people like library tech"  The report Char was speaking to is Informing Innovation: Tracking student interest in emerging library technologies at Ohio University (147-pg PDF).  Really interesting results, but Char pointed out several times that this is a case study, and that results could be pretty different at your library.

Keynote - Day 3 - Growing up and Grown-up Digital - Net-Gen Speaks
Stephen Abrahms and a panel of teens - see note above about "case study".  Really interesting to hear these three young adults talk about their use of technology and thoughts about libraries, but I wouldn't bet any money that this was a representative sample of America's youth.

Nicole Engard - Library Mashups
http://mashups.web2learning.net (homepage for her recent book, Library Mashups)
http://www.programmableweb.com -- tracks mashups and tools
Mashup Tools - Yahoo Pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com) Jody Fagan wrote an article in Computers in Libraries (2007) that explained it very well for Nicole - also chapter 7 of Nicole's book
http://readingradar.com - NYT bestseller list and merges with data from Amazon.com
http://www.thisweknow.org - interesting local / govt info for locations in the US
Check out "machine tags" on the flickr API
http://mashups.plsinfo.craftyspace.com - Library Mashup Demo site
http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api - Open Library APIs
http://worldcat.org/devnet/wiki/SearchAPIDetails - WorldCat APIs

I could really use an entire session or workshop on Yahoo Pipes! - plenty of reading to do there.

And that's where my notes end.  Overall I really enjoyed the conference this year; especially nice to meet so many twitter friends in person :-)  Might be heading to CIL2010 next April - that'd be my first time there since 1994!

The end of TL Infobits :-(

Aw crap, I just read in the latest issue of TL Infobits that Carolyn Kotlas's position at UNC Chapel Hill has been eliminated, and as a result Infobits is folding as well.  From the editor's note:

This will be the next to the last issue of TL Infobits. My position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been eliminated, and I will leave employment here in December. Since its beginning in 1993, Infobits has always been a one-person endeavor, and so with my departure, Infobits will leave the ITS Teaching and Learning division as well.

It has been my privilege and pleasure to provide this service to my readers over the years. The newsletter has given me a chance to reach out to the academic community on and beyond my own campus. It has enabled me to take my information hunting and gathering skills beyond just satisfying my own curiosity, thus sharing my interests in IT for academics with others. And, not least, I have been able to meet, although only virtually, many dedicated, interesting people who have encouraged my work with their kind comments.

In the event that Infobits resurfaces in a new home, there will be more information in the November issue.

-- Carolyn Kotlas, Infobits Editor

We'll miss you Carolyn, thanks for the great service over the years.  Somebody please hire her quickly!

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

An emerging list of the top 100 tools for learning in 2009, as picked by 202 learning professionals (and possibly you!).  Pleased to note that I was aware of 87 of them, with most of the new-to-me ones being related to animation and course authoring systems.  I found it particularly interesting to note the changes between 2007-2009, with some obvious risers like Twitter and Slideshare, but some interesting fallers, such as Facebook drifting from 17 in 2007, to 24 last year, to 33 this year, Microsoft Word dropping from 10 to 22 to 42 this year, and Bloglines falling from 12 to 30 to 73 this year!

Well worth a few minutes to look over the list to see what might be useful to you.

Federal Register 2.0

Cool, the Federal Register is now available in XML!

"With an XML edition, independent organizations can reorganize the Register’s contents in ways that are more meaningful to you and address your personal interests; track issues that are likely to affect your community or your profession; and even engage in real-time public discussions about its contents with others across the country and around the world."

What IS Google Wave?

Last week I got my invite to Google Wave, and Chad Haefele and I played with it for a little bit (he's the only other person I know with an account so far, even though I've sent out a few invites of my own).  It's kinda slick, but we were both just poking sticks at it to see what it might be good for.  Today on twitter someone posted a link to this video, which does an excellent job of explaining 3.5% of what Wave is all about (epipheo's stats, not mine)

Incidentally, this is my first time trying TypePad's newest embed feature - it works great - it's the small things :-)

Post-holiday link dump

Some miscellaneous links you may find of interest:

• Co-Browsing Tools: Guide To The Best Online Services
• Five Best Video-Sharing Sites
• Newswire Opinion: Libraries Clash with Harvard Business Publishing on Deep-Linking
• The undiscussed danger to libraries in the Google Books Settlement: A warning from library law expert Peter Hirtle
• Sony to link Readers with libraries, allow e-book borrowing
• Facebook Privacy Update: Here’s What’s Changing

Use embedr for video/screencast playlists

A couple of months ago my colleague Carmen pointed me to Embedr, "a free service that lets anyone create a custom playlist of videos from the top video sites on the web."  Finally had a chance to take a look at it and quite like it.  Basically you can feed it the URLs of videos across the following video sharing sites: Atom Films, Blip.TV, Bragster, Break.com, College Humor, Dailymotion, DivShare, Edublogs.tv, Metacafe, TeacherTube, Google Video, MySpace Video, Vimeo, YouTube, or you can build a smart playlist from YouTube only that will automatically update based on keywords, categories, regions, YouTube usernames, etc.  That would be a really quick way to keep a current list of all your library's screencasts in one spot on your library's site! Here's an example I grabbed from the public area of the Embedr site:

Build your own custom video playlist at embedr.com

Pretty neat - check it out!

7 Things You Should Know About Microblogging

The latest in the Educause 7 Things You Should Know About... series covers Microblogging (aka Twitter).

Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media—on the Internet. Microblogging offers a portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many and has captured the public imagination. Friends use it to keep in touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or share useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their publicists) microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables sophisticated updates and interaction with other applications, and the resulting profusion of functionality is helping to define new possibilities for this type of communication.

Download Your YouTube Videos Legally

Amit at Digital Inspiration points out that you can now download your YouTube videos legally.  But the emphasis is on YOUR videos.  The best tool I know for being able to download all YouTube videos, and in the format of your choice, is KickYouTube.