Posts tagged with 'Web 2.0'

Technologies for Assisting with e-Resource workflow (Notes from Workflow Roundtable, Part II)

ewinter March 25th, 2008

At the Workflow Roundtable, the group also discussed the ways in which they were using a variety of tools and technologies to assist with workflow-related issues.

Some of them were:

  • A blog to track resource problems and experiences (to keep track for personal use, in case the same problem comes up again)
  • Scanning/digitizing license agreements and keeping them on a shared drive so that they can be retrieved and emailed to library employees as needed.
  • ERMs: Obviously, this is a major tool many libraries are working on using for many things; some mentioend using existing problem-tracking fields or creating customized fields for this purpose, so that library employees can see when resources are experiencing problems.
  • Adapted ILS modules to deal with e-resources in lieu of an ERM, e.g., eTracker (Deberah England from Wright State Univ. presented on this during ER&L 2008)
  • An internal listserv with a searchable archives feature for those who work with e-resources to share info.
  • A wiki for communication between collection development and acquisitiosn regarding e-resource subscriptions (new purchases, renewals, changes, etc. We are doing this at Georgia Tech…a presentation I gave at ALA 2007 in part on this topic is available at http://r2consulting.org/ppnts/GTWikisEtc.ppt)

Tags: , , , , , , ,

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

rnelson February 28th, 2007

Cindi Trainor, Director of Library and Information Technology at Claremont Colleges gave an interesting presentation on how the library has become integrated in course content and curriculum at Claremont College. I’m not too familiar with the various learning management systems (LMS) so this was a particularly informative session.

The presentation centered on how libraries have become embedded in the curriculum at Claremont Colleges as librarians work with faculty in creating library instruction in courses. Claremont colleges had several different LMS’, which made it difficult for a student to navigate an online course because they were constantly confronted with a new interface to learn. They decided there was a need to simplify things and decided to go with one LMS and they choose Sakai, an open source LMS developed by Univ. of Michigan, Indiana, MIT and Standford.

Once they selected Sakai, they moved very quickly. They added all courses to Sakai, included a link to the library web page from each course, taught faculty how to find library content and provided documentation and training. They accomplished all of this in 3 months-impressive!
Through screen captures Trainor demonstrated how the library is embedded in the LMS.

For example, the studnet logs into the LMS site. It contains a list of their courses, an E-resource checklist, recent announcements, assignments, and other various content items. Depending on the class, there may be a link to the other library resources that pertain to this specific course. Trainor did mention that the concept of an embedded librarian isn’t applicable to every course. For instance, a chemistry lab course may not include links to library materials.

Trainor also talked about how other applications can be integrated into Sakai. It’s possible to create images in Content DM and export an html page that refers to all of these images. So, for example, an instructor can mark a particular set of images and the export an html page that shows direct links back to these images. One can also create lists of citations using Sakai and Trainor demonstrated this as well.

There is a lot more depth within the presentation that I’m able to share, but I think this is definitely a good one, particularly for libraries who are trying to become more integrated into classroom instruction. Trainor showed us how with hard work, a dedicated staff, and cooperation between the library and IT staff the library can become central in the learning process.

Tags: , , ,

Things to Read Before Session

preynolds February 7th, 2007

  Before the session Developing Electronic Collections with Shrinking Budgets (doing more with less) It would be a good idea to read the following material.

A lot of this may seem like basic information that we all know but, Google changes features continually and it is often hard to keep up. When I last counted the Google services listed under “More Google” and under “Labs” I came up with seventy different products or services with fifty-two of those products being search related. How many of these are we really familiar with let alone their individual operators and capabilities? In their book Google Hacks Bausch, Calishain, Dornfest list hack #1 as being aware of and using the Google directory, #2 is Google Zeitgeist, #4 is the built in spell checker, #5 the Google Phone Book and the list goes on. The point is that just by studying the documentation and tools provided by Google we immediately become expert searchers compared to the vast majority of Internet users. This is where our customers are going.

A recent comparison of Cornell University reference librarians and Internet users on Google Answers showed reference librarians with their vastly larger collection of quality print and electronic information, years of experience, and professional training scored little better than the Internet users offering information on Google Answers. In addition to this, the librarians cost two to three times as much. The researchers seem to try to excuse these results by saying “A final point on the evaluations involves sources. Google researchers (as opposed to the librarians) are experts at locating hard-to-find information on the Web. Their answers, therefore, tend to be limited to freely available networked resources.” Is this an excuse or an insult?

Kenney, Anne R., Nancy Y. McGovern, Ida T. Martinez, and Lance J. Heidig. “Google Meets eBay What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers.” D-Lib Magazine Volume 9 Number 6June 2003 1-16. 06 Nov 2006.

It’s time for us to learn the ins and outs of search engines, web sites, “become experts at locating hard-to-find information on the web”. An easy way to acquire this knowledge is to remember the three P’s of becoming a search engine expert. Pick two or three search engines to use regularly. Print and study any help pages or documentation they provide. Practice using the various tools on a regular basis and incorporate them into your own research and into your work with others.

R Philip Reynolds
Research Education Librarian
Stephen F. Austin State University
Computer Science, History, Military Science, Philosophy, Religion, Political Science, Geography

The Tao of Searching
http://tao-of-searching.blogspot.com/

Tags: , ,

The need for a tagging standard

Charlene Barina January 15th, 2007

From slashdot (good for reading tech commentary on the subject):

“Tags are everywhere now. Not just blogs, but famous news sites, corporate press bulletins, forums, and even Slashdot. That’s why it’s such a shame that they’re rendered almost entirely useless by the lack of a tagging standard with which tags from various sites and tag aggregators like Technorati and Del.icio.us can compare and relate tags to one another. Depending on where you go and who you ask, tags are implemented differently, and even defined in their own unique way. Even more importantly, tags were meant to be universal and compatible: a medium of sharing and conveying info across the blogosphere — the very embodiment of a semantic web. Unfortunately, they’re not. Far from it, tags create more discord and confusion than they do minimize it. I have to say, it would be nice to just learn one way of tagging content and using it everywhere.”

In case you didn’t see it, the cited article they’re referring to (on a blog, no less) can be found by clicking on this link. It also has some good commentary

Tags:

OpenURL and students’ need-to-know

Charlene Barina November 20th, 2006

As a graduate student, I’ve come to appreciate more the varieties of ways to leverage things like journal article access and what we have here at UW. However, sometimes it’s a question of guess and find out, too.

I use connotea, a Nature-based cross between social bookmarking and endnote, that allows me to bookmark articles and tag them with topics and what-not (see my listings for some real-life examples). The developers of connotea are using working on plugins to auto-import citation information, and user contributions help a lot in expanding their options (right now, it’ll auto-recognized from PubMed, but not from, say, Jstor or Taylor and Francis).

The kicker though is that there is an option for entering a OpenURL resolver for your institution so that it’ll generate OpenURL links for each item you add to your list. This has proven pretty useful for browsing journals or jumping to my pdfs, but it was information that wasn’t readily accessible. I think my email request for the server literally was forwarded on to the Associate Dean of Libraries for the libraries on-campus - which definitely made me feel spiffy on one level - like getting a response from the President of the University concerning directions to his office.

Similarly, while playing around with modifying existing libx code for UW catalogs, I ended up getting an email from the head of information systems for UW libraries - also fairly neat. I got libx to work with UW and Seattle Public Libraries’ catalog (I just randomly plugged in OPAC options for them), but javascript did me in and I haven’t worked on it since.

I’m still vague on what OpenURL and OPACs are, really, but using some IT finagling, where you rarely knowwhat the heck you’re doing anyway worked well enough :)

I guess my main question is there a reason that the library infrastructure isn’t accessible through faq/site searching? Or is this something that varies from library to library? With random library and info widgets floating around out there, are libraries even interested in open-sourced or enduser-built access products?

Tags: ,

Web 2.0

Kelly Smith November 13th, 2006

I was reading a recent issue of “Library Technology Reports” about the Web 2.0 concept. This may be old news to a lot of you, but I suspect it is new to those of us who are less “techy”. In brief, it’s the idea that the content of websites are dynamic and should be a collaboration between their creators and their users, not just static libraries of information. Blogs and wikis are two examples of Web 2.0 software. You can read more about it here:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2005/09/web-20-for-librarians.html

Tags: ,