The Distant Librarian

OCLC Western - Keep Up! Blogs, Wikis and RSS

On December 6 and repeated on January 15 I'll be delivering a 2-hour presentation on Blogs, Wikis and RSS in the OCLC Western series of Keep Up! sessions.  Members of OCLC Western (from AK, CA, HI, ID, MT, OR, WA) can register for $30, and if you'd like to attend but aren't a member it'll set you back $70 (but you still have to be from one of those states).  See you there!


Technorati Tags: OCLC, Blogs, RSS, Wikis

Zero-Install Remote Screen Sharing Apps?

Scott Leslie at edtechpost is seeking a zero-install remote screen sharing application - something that would allow him to see his patron's screen w/o the patron having to download an application.  I think Yugma might do the trick, do any of you have actual experience with Yugma, or with any application that would fit the bill for Scott?  There are a couple of decent suggestions in the comments of his post.


Technorati Tags: Yuma

Using Google SMS to find the way

You may recall that a week or two ago I had some trouble finding my way from the Monterey airport to the San Francisco airport.  The woman at the car rental counter didn't have any maps outside of Monterey, and couldn't give me directions up to SFO.  I don't have a fancy phone, but the one I have does support text messaging.  Did you know you can text messages to Google and they'll fire answers back almost immediately?  Really, to Google, that's 466453, no area code or anything else needed.  Had I remembered that, I might've thought to use that option to get driving directions - you can bet I'll remember next time! Here's how it works:

Technorati Tags: Google, SMS

2008 Off-Campus Library Services Conference Scholarship

The Thirteenth Off-Campus Library Services Conference will be held in Salt Lake City on April 23-25.  The conference is offering a comprehensive scholarship to a librarian or prospective librarian who meets the following requirements:

• has never attended an Off-Campus Library Services Conference
• must either be a library science student interested in distance education or a librarian who has worked less than two years with off-campus students.
• must prepare a presentation and paper about a current off-campus/ distance learning topic. The       presentation will be a fifty-five minute session including 10 minutes for questions.  Written           papers must have text (exclusive of graphs, charts, or references) over five pages in length and be formatted according to the APA Style Manual.  They should contain a reference list that shows you have researched your topic.  The paper will be included in the published proceedings.

The scholarship includes:

• Free conference registration
• Five meals
• A $600 check for travel and room expenses

To qualify, recreate and complete the form below in Word and email it as an attachment to [email protected] by January 15, 2008.  Winners will be selected by the Program Advisory Board of the Off-Campus Library Services Conference based on the quality of the proposed presentation and benefit to the individual.  The winners will be notified on February 1, 2008

For more information about the conference visit the conference web site at http://ocls.cmich.edu/conference

Name:__________________________________________________Institution:_______________________________________________

Address:___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Phone:_______________________________                  

Email:______________________________________________________

            _____Student                     _____Librarian with less than 2 years experience

What year did or will you graduate from a Library Science program? __________
How do you feel attending this conference will benefit you?
Title of your proposed presentation:
Objective of your proposed presentation:
Abstract (500 words or less):


Technorati Tags: OCLSC2008

Publish, Not Perish: The Art & Craft of Publishing in Scholarly Journals

Awarded the August 2007 PRIMO Site of the Month,  Publish, Not Perish is an online tutorial written by librarians at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  "In this course you will learn to:

• Describe the role of scholarly publishing in an academic career
• List the essential steps of planning and writing a scholarly paper.
• Develop a personal publication plan
• Compare and contrast the different publishing models currently in use
• Describe the types of articles you can write
• List the pros and cons of collaborative authoring
• Describe the tools and resources a scholarly writer needs to have on hand

There are five modules, Overview of the Scholarly Publishing Process, Laying the Groundwork, Deadlines and Details, the Editorial Process, and Customizing your Publishing plans.  My colleague Claudette, who pointed out the site, notes that the only tough part is to find the navigation button, which is an arrow all the way down in the lower right of the page.  Thanks Claudette!

CFP: Special Innovate Issue on Multi-User Virtual Environments

No specific mention of library application in this CFP, but let's hear from some of you Second Lifers:

Innovate, published as a public service by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services and sponsored, in part, by Microsoft is soliciting manuscripts for a special issue on academics in virtual environments. This issue focuses on the use of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) as an enhancement to K-21 education. A MUVE combines graphics and audio with the ability to communicate with multiple users in real time within the context of a 3-D virtual environment. MUVEs are not necessarily considered games, as programs like Second Life and There have no end goal or objective.

Harvard's CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion course opened the doors for other academics to use virtual environments to enhance teaching and learning. In the past two years, over 300 colleges and universities have claimed virtual land in an attempt to enhance content delivery. This virtual land and its future development occurs only a computer network. While critics and skeptics exist, many educators are looking to take the plunge and discover the potential of virtual-based teaching.

Submissions for this special issue may address, but are not limited to, these key issues:

1. Does teaching in virtual environments enhance course content? If so, how? If not, why not?
2. How is learning assessed within virtual environments? Are these assessments comparable to existing forms of assessment?
3. What are the ethical considerations of creating virtual content? What are the practical concerns? If a university funds virtual projects, who owns the content? Who should own the content? How are students protected? How is student work protected?
4. Are there best practices for teaching or research in virtual worlds? What are some strategies for beginners?
5. What are the challenges of teaching in virtual space? How are these challenges addressed?
6. How are virtual projects funded? What avenues for support exist?
7. What pedagogical approaches are central to the delivery of materials within virtual worlds?
   

If you would like to submit a manuscript on this topic, please review our submission guidelines at
http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=submit and send your manuscript to the guest editors, Beth Ritter-Guth ([email protected] ) and Timothy Shields ([email protected]), and to the editor-in-chief, James Morrison ([email protected]), no later than January 15, 2008.

Survey on trends in document delivery for distance education

Michele D. Behr writes to the OFFCAMP list:

For a presentation at the upcoming Off Campus Library Services Conference we are researching trends in document delivery fordistance learners. We are investigating factors that may impact use of document delivery services, i.e. level of automation, marketingefforts, number of electronic journal subscriptions and e-books, etc.  We have developed a brief survey to gather information fromother institutions which provide document delivery services to their distance education communities.

We will be asking for statistics concerning your institution’s electronic journal subscriptions, numbers of e-book titles, documentdelivery statistics for distance education students, and student enrollment over the past five years. Gathering those statisticsahead of time or having access to them while you are filling out the survey may be helpful.

If you do not have the information to answer a question you may skip that question. Please answer as many questions as accurately asyou can.

We estimate that you will need 15-30 minutes to complete the survey.

The survey is available here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7CV0tkSiaz6HWekmOqadEA_3d_3d

We will be collecting responses until November 21, 2007.

Your response to this survey will be very valuable to our research, and we appreciate your participation in sharing this informationwith us. Please contact us with any questions or comments about this survey.

Sincerely,
Michele D. Behr
Julie L. Hayward
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI
michele.behr(at)wmich.edu

It only took me about 10 minutes, though I did have to stop to dig out my historical statistics...

R-mail now SendMeRSS

R-mail, one of the first RSS to Email utilities I really liked, was acquired earlier this year by NBC, of all things.  After quite a bit of development work, R-mail has now been re-introduced as SendMeRSS.  Site looks really slick, and if you click on the banner at the top of the page (only later did I see the Watch Video button) you'll get a nice explanation of the fact that they're simply sending RSS feeds to an email box. 

WikipediaVision

Found a link to this on the ResearchBuzz blog: WikipediaVision allows you to see in almost real-time, random English-language edits to WikiPedia according to where they happen on Google Maps.  When you watch it in real time it gives you about 5-8 seconds or so to read the title of the entry that's being edited, and then click through to see the actual edit that was made.  To just get a flavour of how the thing works I sped it up for you:

I've noticed that if it can't fully resolve the IP address it seems to just default to the middle of the country in question (either that, or there are a whole lot of edits coming from some small town in Northern Saskatchewan!)

The impression that I get

So I, like many others, was fogged in as I tried to leave Monterey on Wednesday night.  For me, the only thing United could offer was another attempt out 24 hours later.  Not a single meal voucher, no help with a hotel, wouldn't pay for me to get up to SFO where I could grab a flight home the next AM.  Thanks for nothing United, you've lost a customer for life.

So I ended up renting one of the last cars available at the Monterey airport and driving up to SFO in order to catch a flight out the next AM.  The woman at the counter was nice, but didn't really seem to know much about the area and couldn't tell me the best way to get to San Fran, and oddly they only had maps for the Monterey Bay area.  It was now 9:30, 3.5 hours after my flight was supposed to leave, and I just wanted to get going, so I pointed the car north and followed the only sign I saw that said San Francisco, and that was up Highway 1. 

The impression that I got was that it would probably be an incredibly scenic drive on a sunny day.  On a foggy night, however, it wasn't much fun.  I'll have to try it again someday.  Here's a Google Maps comparison of the route I should've taken vs the route I did take: