The Distant Librarian

No Frills RSS-email

Well there are no frills at all, but it'll deliver RSS content to your email: Feed My Inbox. I like SendMeRSS and Feedburner's solutions better.

Be my counterpart in Qatar!

Just posted on the Foothills Library Association Jobline is our ad for a Public Services Systems Librarian in Qatar. If I were a younger man...

A pretty popular explanation of screencasting

I have an RSS feed to monitor delicious for new tags on the term "screencasting", and of course I often find interesting nuggets as a result.  Never, though, have I seen this many people tagging the same page:

They're all saving Screencasting: How To Start, Tools and Guidelines, from Smashing Magazine.   It's a nice overview, and I notice the post has been updated to include suggestions left by commentors. 

Presentations from Reference Renaissance conference

The head of our Information Commons attended a conference entitled, A Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends, and points out that many of the presentations are available online.

From the conference homepage:

Rumors of the “death of reference” have been greatly exaggerated! Reference service now encompasses not just traditional forms such as telephone, email, and in-person point-of-service, but also Instant Messaging, Text Messaging (SMS), blogs, wikis, library pages on MySpace and Facebook, and virtual reference desks in Second Life.

A Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends conference will explore all aspects of reference service in a broad range of contexts, including libraries and information centers, in academic, public, school, corporate, and other special library environments. This two-day conference will incorporate the multitude of established, emerging, and merging types of reference service including both traditional and virtual reference. It presents an opportunity for all reference practitioners and scholars to explore the rapid growth and changing nature of reference, as an escalating array of information technologies blend with traditional reference service to create vibrant hybrids.

There were a LOT of sessions, so do take a look - probably something of interest in here for you.

C-61 Made in Canada explained

A-ha! This clears up so much understanding surrounding the supposedly "made in Canada" Bill C-61 (Canadian DMCA). Much of the early brouhaha-ha surrounded the fact that this bill was very obviously crafted by the hands of the MPAA and the RIAA (both American organizations). But last week I received my latest issue of House-to-House (not available online) from my MP, Diane Ablonczy, and quite serendipitously on page 3 were these two useful articles. (I snipped out the middle article dealing with Consumer Protection and Natural Health Products):



Disregard for now the partial and misinformation in the Copyright Reform article, but look at the Made in Canada article at the top of the page. To qualify for the "Made in Canada" label, only 51% of its "production costs and last major transformation" has to occur in Canada. I suspect that with Bill C-61 the government contributed even a little more than 51%, so I guess we'll have to lay off on that complaint.

An Anthroplogical introduction to YouTube

A couple of weeks ago D'Arcy Norman posted about Michael Welsch's latest video, An anthropological introduction to YouTube, recorded during a presentation to the Library of Congress on June 23rd, 2008. It's been on my to-do list since then, but I only today got around to watching it on my wife's iPod during the drive home from vacation today (she was driving at the time). Michael's name may be familiar as the guy who burst on the scene last year with The Machine is Us/ing Us. This one's almost an hour long, but WELL worth the time. This guy and his students are good - really digging out some interesting themes and trends surrounding YouTube. I'm going to start following along on the Digital Ethnography blog.

As an aside, this is actually the first time I've watched any full-length video on an iPod, and I was really impressed with the quality. I thought YouTube had added the ability to download videos, but later realized I was able to do so thanks to the Better YouTube Firefox Extension - go get it!

On the Move with the Mobile Web - LTR

Just finished browsing through the latest issues of Library Technology Reports which someone at ALA kindly sent to me. Written by Ellyssa Kroski (iLibrarian and InfoTangle), On the Move with the Mobile Web: Libraries and Mobile Technologies does a good job of providing background on the state of mobile (aka cellphones for the most part) technology and trends in the US. Even if you're in a different market you'll find good information here. I was particularly pleased to see the final chapter include starting points for making your own website mobile-friendly. Something else to add to the list of things to do! Oh, and it looks like you can download the first chapter as a PDF from the ALA site.

RIP Permanently removes elements from websites

Lifehacker reports on a Firefox extension called RIP which works like my fav, Aardvark, only permanently. Most excellent for printing, especially.

Just in time learning In Plain English

As part of his Interviews with Innovators series, Jon Udell talks with Lee LeFever of Common Craft. Common Craft is the husband and wife company behind such internet favorites as RSS in Plain English, Twitter in Plain English, and of course the incredibly useful Zombies in Plain English. During the interview Lee discusses how they got started, what's important to Common Craft and most interestingly to me, his philosophy behind how to make these important learning aids. At only 26 minutes it's well worth your time to listen.

Real Life in the Virtual Library

There's a freely-available article in the most recent issue of the Charleston Advisor that describes what it's like to put together a small virtual library to support distance students:
Real Life in the Virtual Library, The Charleston Advisor, Volume 10, Number 1, July 2008 , pp. 47-48(2).  As you can see, it's only a couple pages, but if you're curious about this kind of setup, it's a good read.

Update on Camtasia Studio for the Mac

Betsy Weber has just posted a 5-minute interview with Troy Stein, Camtasia Studio product manager in which he provides some details on how the Mac version of Camtasia Studio is coming along. Some relevant details: it's being written completely for the Mac - not just porting the Windows version over. Private beta (pick me please!) scheduled for this fall, with a public beta targeted for Macworld. While the date was not mentioned in the interview, Macworld is scheduled for Jan 5-9, 2009.

Help the Australians OCR their newspapers

On 25 July the Australian Newspapers Beta service was launched to the public. The Beta service contains 70,000 newspaper pages from 1803 onwards and additional pages are being added each week. The Library welcomes feedback on the service, and will continue development of the Beta service over the next few months. 1 .2 million pages have been scanned from microfilm. A list of the titles and date ranges scanned is available from the Selected Newspapers page on the project site.

What's really neat is that you can correct any OCR mistakes you find! Give it a try, even your 3 minutes of playtime will help improve the product.

Counterintuitive research on how online articles are cited.

The July 18 issue of Science has an interesting article titled Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship, by James A. Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago (Science 18 July 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5887, pp. 395 - 399 DOI: 10.1126/science.1150473).

I've seen research or statistics (note to self - go dig them up) that indicate materials placed in institutional repositories are cited far more often than articles that are only available in print, and that seems to make sense since they're quickly and easily located via the web.

But Evans's research seems to suggest something to the opposite effect. His conclusion (and I have to admit I have to take his word as most of the methodology goes over my head) is that (italics mine),

"electronically available journals may portend an ironic change for science... I show that as more journal issues came online, the articles referenced tended to be more recent, fewer journals and articles were cited, and more of those citations were to fewer journals and articles. The forced browsing of print archives may have stretched scientists and scholars to anchor findings deeply into past and present scholarship. Searching online is more efficient and following hyperlinks quickly puts researchers in touch with prevailing opinion, but this may accelerate consensus and narrow the range of findings and ideas built upon."

Very interesting, and quite important as we continue to move towards digital-preferred collections. Now of course he isn't looking at the quality of the research. Maybe these newer articles citing fewer resources are actually tighter and better than their predecessors?

$250 PBwiki account available to librarians and teachers for free!

The Krafty Librarian blogs that PBwiki is having a Back to School Challenge which will give you, librarian or educator, a free one-year premium PBwiki account ($250 value). What's that premium account get you over the free free account? I'm not sure since I couldn't find a page discussing premium accounts for educators, but here's the page for premium accounts for business (same thing?)

Full Access Controls 10GB Storage Space (new! Increased from 5GB) No Ads Unlimited Pages Enterprise-Grade Encryption

Full data backups Hideable/Lockable Pages Priority email support within 24 hours Export any page to PDF and HTML Single Sign On

Sign up for the Back to School Challenge here (it doesn't start until mid-August)

Rocking out in the library

My Uncle found and sent this one to me - that's one happy library user!