While I was working on this lesson, Nicole emailed about EKU ResNet videos on You Tube. While searching for Eastern Kentucky University, I ran across this video, which is really cool. The videographer (for lack of a better term) set photos of the University Ensemble, which were scanned by us, to a digitized version of one of their songs. He/She did an excellent job and created a nice video showcasing photos that haven't been looked at for years.
The question that arises, for the archives especially, is copyright and use rules. Since images and use fees are a part of our revenue stream, where do we draw the line between fair use and substantial use fees for public display of numerous images. Should all our images be free and available to all who wish to use them?
But that wasn't the lesson, was it? The ResNet videos give us some idea of how You Tube can be used in an academic setting. I was thinking that some type of video highlighting some of the really cool items in our collections would be nice.
Wow! I was totally amazed Saturday evening when I went by
the latest Habitat building site. Saturday morning at 8:00 there was nothing but a foundation and floor system that looked sort of like this photo, but not exactly because this is Minnie's floor, not LB's.
By 6:30 Saturday evening the outside was completely finished: siding, soffits, fascia trim, front porch (including railings) and roof completely shingled. The only things left are the side porch and electrical boxes. They also had the electric rough-in almost complete, the HVAC rough-in was complete and all the windows had been trimmed on the inside.
I was completely amazed. Eastside Baptist Church brought out all their builders and they went to work. That just goes to show how much difference it makes using professionals instead of volunteers like me that have to relearn every process each time they volunteer. A big 'O Yea" to Eastside.
For this blog post I'm using Google Docs to compose the entry. It is:
easy to use
has all the basic word processing features most people would use
best of all, it is free.
I'm playing as you can tell.
But Google Docs isn't without quirks. First, I opened a gmail attachment in GoogleDocs and got an error message after opening an account. When I did get in Google Docs the attachment was there and the Microsoft Word document had transferred perfectly. After that I opened a new document and created a blog post. The first problem I had was actually a logistic one. I am working on a different computer, since my laptop has been afflicted with the dreaded blinking cursor, and the image I wanted to insert is on my laptop. Not a major problem, I saved the file and will insert the image when I am back on my computer. Now if I had uploaded all my photos to Flickr this would not have been a problem.
The next document I opened actually caused Internet Explorer to close. But the next doc (this one) has worked well so far.
Granted the application is limited in the real fancy things it can do, but most users don't need or use the upper end features. I played around with the Presentation and Spreadsheet applications and really liked them also. I think next I will try to publish a presentation of photos to my blog and see how that works.
The export features are a strong point for the application. You have the option to export as html, Word, PDF, and other formats. Another strong point is the ability to share and see revisions. This would be a good thing for students working on group projects.
Some things I wish it would do include:
highlight spelling errors
have more fonts (but I am font crazy)
more control over line spacing. (Word Perfect which I use have wonderful line spacing)
I haven't posted about the house in a while and since I spent my fall break working out there, this is the perfect time to update the progress. The finishing details are so meticulous and time consuming that it has been an act of faith to make myself go out there everyday. There aren't any photos, because you really can't see any progress at this point.
Most of the outside of the house is complete, except the stair handrails which will be fairly quick and gutters which they hire done. The plumbing is complete on the inside, most of the wall painting and trim work is done. The biggest jobs left on the inside is painting trim and doors, putting in closet shelves, medicine cabinets and towel racks. And cleaning.
The closing is set for next Friday and dedication for Saturday at noon. I'll try to post pictures of the finished house and dedication ceremony.
There are several applications that would benefit students, but the online 'office' packages would be especially useful. Since there are student computers all over campus, these applications would make it easy for students to grab the closest computer and work on papers or presentations without worrying about software. If there is an internet connection the paper is available.
The Zotero Firefox extension looks like it would be useful as well. I use Scrapbook (another Firefox extension) to save web pages to view when I don't have an internet connection available, but Scrapbook doesn't capture citation information or integrate with Word. Scrapbook will capture all links to a page down as many levels as you want to go, but that sometimes adds up to a huge number of page captures. If they would let you chose just the links you want to capture that would be more useful. There are many other Firefox extensions that may also be useful to students, including one that renders web pages as IE if they don't view properly in Firefox.
The "annotate the web" items could also be useful to students doing research papers. They can flag items they want to use, bookmark them in del.icio.us with a tag for the class they're writing the paper for and bingo, everything is easy to find when they start writing. Whay wasn't college this easy when I went?
Even the survey sites like Survey Monkey, Floorplanner and Google Sketchup could be useful for students in certain disciplines, but probably not across the student body like wikis, online 'office' packages and extensions.
The first wiki I updated was the Blogging Libraries Wiki. I noticed that the Madison County Library wasn't listed under public libraries, so I added it. It felt really weird to be editing someone else's web content, but it was almost too easy. I didn't even have to log in or register.
If I could get Chuck on board, I could see using a wiki to work on a Best Practices for Digitization document. There is so much information already out there that this would be a place to bring it all together so we could discuss and work on our own document.
It would also work for any discussions the library will be having for an IR in the future. Or web page redesign. Or strategic planning. Or student work groups. Or...
Outside the library I have a web page I have been building for years. A wiki might be an easier way to compile the information on that web site. Allowing other users to add to the information would be a big plus. OK, I did it. In a matter of a few minutes I set up a wiki and transfered the web page to it and added even more links. I think I like this! No, I love it!
The University of Minnesota Library staff wiki was really nice. I liked the idea of having all the travel information there, links to other campus web sites for employees and tons more information.
I had already come across the Biz Wiki and Lib Success wikis when looking for digitization best practices. Both of these and the UM site above have links to all things digital. Now to find time to work through all that information. The Blogging Libraries wiki was also helpful in finding library blogs.
I have also recently run across wikis used by other universities to compile subject guides for students. This could be a tool for our library, but del.icio.us can provide the same service. Also, any group working on an event or project could benefit from a wiki. An example would be the Web Advisory Group. Links to sites the committee likes could be posted, as well as various versions and test drives of the new site. Discussion and input from group members could also be added. Any group producing documents or discussing issues could also benefit.
I really liked the functionality of the Encore catalog. The tag cloud worked well to limit search results. The basketry search at Michigan State resulted in 97 entries and I was able to use the tag cloud to narrow down the results. Once students learn about tag clouds they will help them narrow down large searches. When will Google utilize clouds?
I've heard of del.icio.us for a long time, but have never used it until now. I really like the ability to access my bookmarks from anywhere. Several classes that I teach access my bookmarks from a static web page. Adding new sites to this page is tedious and time consuming, but with del.icio.us I can tag the bookmarks, update them easily and refer students to this site which is always current.
I can see using this tool for the archives as well. There are many web sites available with valuable historical information. A link to a del.icio.us bookmark page on our web site would be useful to researchers on and off campus. Hmmm, what pages should I bookmark for archives? Check here for the Archives del.icio.us account.
My search term was basketry. In Google there were 1,260,000 hits. In eQuest keyword the search returned only 11 titles. Apparently basketry is not an LC Subject Heading, because there were no titles listed under this heading. However, there were 10 titles that showed up with "baskets" in various subject headings.
Of course the Google search is absolutely overwhelming. There is no way to actually look at over a million pages and the search term would need to be expanded to actually find what you are looking for. If web pages were tagged and Google searched tags rather than text it would help limit searches. But that will never happen.
I think tags are LC Subject Headings in everyday language. They tend to be more haphazard because a lot of thought has gone into making subject headings consistent and descriptive. Tags will never have that structure, because not everyone thinks like a cataloger.
I can see tags being more flexible because I might tag this book in my library with basketry, baskets, basket making, and basket weaving patterns. With that many variations the tag would show up no matter what search term the researcher used. I never search eQuest with subject headings because I don't think like a cataloger. I almost always use keyword searches and never have trouble finding the titles I need.
I have gone back to my blog posts and added tags to some of my earliest entries. Eventually I will tag my library books and Flickr photos. Some day, when I have nothing else to do.
Rollyo was interesting, but I noticed that even though the user specifies web sites to search, Rollyo also added "entire web" at the bottom of the pages searched. This seems pointless to me. Why not just do a Google search.
The search roll that I created was for free audio books. Since I don't have a lot of free time to read, I have taken to downloading audiobooks to listen to while I walk or work.
I don't know how often I will use this search, but it's there if I am looking for a specific title. Rollyo would be more useful for student research if it could search our licensed databases, but since they are password protected I guess that isn't possible.
I love LibraryThing! I added a few books by typing in the title and then added a large list with the uploader by just typing in a list of ISBN numbers. Both methods were easy to use and worked great. With the ISBN list I did get a couple duplicate entries, but nothing major. Of course the 200 titles with the free membership didn't come close to covering the number of books I have, so I did the lifetime membership.
LibraryThing is a great way to keep up with books I want to read as well as books I already own. I used tags to differentiate between the two. I still haven't added all the books I own, but hopefully it will keep me from buying multiple copies of one title. You can check my library here.
Bloggoogle looked promising as an academic tool. It is supposed to be a directory of blogging professionals - categorized and rated by their peers. I thought that would be a good way to find good blogs about certain categories, but when I went to register to check it out, I got an error message. Unfortunately you can't even try it without registering.
43things was interesting, especially when I ran across a library using that concept for their Web2.0 sessions which are starting this month. They were covering 23 web2.0 things, 23 because 43 was too many. On this site you can make a list of 43 things you want to do and interact with others who want to do the same things you do. Fun, but too much to keep up with.
Finally, I found one that has a use for academia. CiteULike lets you add journal articles, books, etc. to your bibliography page. These items can be tagged and can be shared with other researchers or kept private. It will tag books from Amazon or articles from journals. You can create groups where students can work together and share bibliographic entries.
There were lots of fun things on the web2.0list, but most of them were for personal use. I saw very little that would be important or useful professionally.
This was my one of my favorite applications from the web20list. Now if I can make it work. The one thing I don't like about it is the extra clicks to get to a webpage.
Again, I played with the Google Reader to find feeds when I first read this lesson. I found it pretty straight forward, even found a friend's blog through a search on a person's name. I just tried out some of the other feed finders and found them harder to use.
One thing that was frustrating was finding local news on feed finders, but when I went to that site I couldn't find an RSS link to subscribe to the feed. I only want one feed reader for time and convenience, but unless I was misunderstanding the search engine, it seemed like you need to sign up with them to get local news feeds.
Overall, I wasn't impressed with the searches and will add feeds just as I stumble across them unless I'm searching for something specific.
I actually set up an RSS feed through Google Reader when this lesson came out, but I didn't blog on it at the time. The reason I chose Google Reader was the read offline feature. I download the feeds and read them at home. The only problem with this is that you can't visit the links offline, but I can star anything I would like to revisit and look at it when I'm online.
Like the other Web 2.0 technology setting up a reader was painless. The painful part is finding good feeds that don't overwhelm you with new posts. News feeds are especially overwhelming. I tried several, deleted some that were too much or that weren't what they seemed to be and have continued to add more that I run across from other sources.
I can't always keep up with the feeds I have, but I do feel better informed on current events and library, archives and digital news items. After I returned from Chicago, I ran across a good archives feed and realized that the author was someone I had worked with in an SAA workshop. Several other blog authors were there, but I didn't actually meet them.
Wow! The first thing that came to mind was typing a 50 page thesis on a typewriter and thinking I had it made because I had an erasable ribbon, so I didn't have to retype pages.
It is mind boggling how much technology has changed in the past ten years. It has become easy for anyone to share their knowledge, ideas, feelings and or anything else with the rest of the world. When I first started researching on the internet in 1994 only large organizations had a web presence in the form of Gopher. There were no graphics only numerical menus until you found what you were looking for. And you better bookmark it, because search engines were so poor you would never find it again.
Today anyone can have a web presence and can easily post anything they want. A computer is not even necessary as you can walk in any library and get internet access to research, correspond or post information. Mashups, blogs and other Web 2.0 things help us to find, share, organize and reformat data in ways never before available.
Search engines have evolved that can bring information to your computer screen instantly. And they keep evolving to develop more and more content for users.
It is exciting to see all the new technologies emerging and to be able to benefit from it.
