I’m still having trouble believing the Adam Curry and birth of podcasting connection. I know it to be true, but every I time I see one of those old MTV VJ photos of him, I waiver. The podcasting in Higher Ed talk given by Steve Ragalevsky from Apple was pretty interesting, and the podcasting how-to part was very intro as advertised.
Some uses in Higher Ed:
- lectures, language instruction
- gradable discussion sections
- self-guided campus tours
- add/drop period (delivery of course descriptions, syllabi via podcast)
I could see this used for oral history projects and field work.
Interesting stats:
MP3 pie in 2004 ( Flash 60+%, iPod 31%, Other 7-9%)
MP3 pie in 2005 (iPod 65%, Flash 29%, Other 4-6%)
Ragalevsky talked a bit about the iPod program at Duke, but if you want more specifics, you may want to check out the freeiPods in Education webcast happening today at 1pm Eastern. It will feature representatives from Duke University and Georgia College and State University. You’ll need to download a free player. This program will be recorded, so if you can’t watch today, you can catch a stream later.
Ragalevsky also demoed Tiger, Apple’s new OS. I have to say WOW. He showed us some cool features of Spotlight’s (desktop search) smart folders, email search, the little Dashboard widgets (a customizer’s dream), and the build-your-own widget capabilities. Now that I’m not in need of heavy duty computer processing, my next laptop purchase may see me on the other side. So yes, I may go Mac, and I said this in a room full of witnesses who collectively gave me the “we got another one” look and cheer. The alleged secret society of Mac users on my campus may soon come in out of the cold as my college is actually considering supporting the Apple Platform on campus.
I’m on Day 1 of a beast of a week, but I caught Audie Cornish’s piece NPR this morning discussing the new Computer Literacy test developed by the ETS people. They also discuss the info literacy movement at libraries, interview students about how they do research, etc. It’s only 4 minutes long, check it out. There’s isn’t a separate mp3 link and I didn’t have time do a tiny url, go here and listen in WMP or RA: eLiteracy on Morning Edition
My toes curled a little when I read this announcement from the faculty listserv. Very very cool that teaching faculty at my school are pondering the value of podcasting in higher ed. A Higher Ed Systems Engineer (that’s his title) from Apple will be giving the presentation. From the description: “This presentation will introduce you to podcasting. It will not only cover what podcasting is, but how it can be leveraged in education to provide a richer learning environment. There will be demonstrations of how to subscribe and create podcasts. Finally, we will look at how the iPod is being used in education.
Overview of topics:
Definition of Podcasting
Podcasting in Education
Demo of Podcasting
How to subscribe to a podcast.
How to create a podcast.
iPods in Education
Podcasting was recently featured in March’s Wired magazine and has been exploding in popularity since its inception last summer. ” They also link to this recent Wired article:
http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/curry.html
My school gives out instructional technology grants to faculty and I have been thinking about a couple of things for a tech grant proposal. I am encouraged.
Jimmy Wales of the Wikimedia Foundation[1], the group responsible for projects like Wikipedia[2] and Wikinews[3], will be speaking about Wikipedia and free knowledge in 101 Pound Hall at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, April 26 at 8:30 pm.
The event is free and open to the public.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/2005/04/19#a864
[1] http://www.wikimedia.org/
[2] http://www.wikipedia.org/
[3] http://www.wikinews.org/
[Jessica, sla-cbos]
It seems like we’re finally getting to the really interesting part of using a new technology: people are starting to talk. I’ve been scanning the journals for recent discussion on IM reference and I found a couple of articles. I am going to share these with my colleagues when we meet today to play with Trillian and discuss how we will promote IM at my library. I read Aaron Schmidt & Michael Stephen’s “IM Me” article in the 1 April InfoTech section of Library Journal. Schmidt & Stephens ponder the practical uses of IM in libraries and profile a few libraries that have been early adopters (including their own). There is a list of best practices and links to the libraries profiled at the end of the article. It was interesting to see the different approaches. I suspect this list of libraries is not all inclusive. Brown has been using IM chat (the only member of my consortium currently doing so) for about a year. They seem to be pretty pleased with the initial response: almost 400 chat sessions over a 10 month period and more than half of them were reference questions (looking for info on x, specific title searches in the OPAC, queries from off-campus) Here’s a bit more on Brown’s BULChat. Funny handle, especially if apply the 5 times fast rule.
I also read an opinion piece on page 30 of the April issue of American Libraries. In “Eeewww! My Patron Tried to Pick Me Up”, Susan Braxton, a science reference librarian at Illinois State’s Milner Library, recounts a session of recreational chatting (the what-are-you-wearing variety) initiated by a patron. Braxton also discusses how to prepare for this inevitable type of conversation as you dabble in IM.
This is just interesting chatter..I was just in the caf to grab a sandwich and the place was at a bit of a standstill. The sandwich ladies were chatting about the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new pope, and people (staff, students and Friars alike) were standing around looking up at the TV screens. Some folks certainly seem to have had a favorite contender and two people I don’t know walked up to me and said: “I was hoping it was going to be the cardinal from Africa…” I’m sure I wouldn’t have paid too much attention to the process if I didn’t work at a Catholic college, but it has been interesting to learn a little more about how a pope becomes a pope. I’ve heard some Catholic jokes I never would have heard before (I was raised a Baptist). We get a steady stream of religious questions at the reference desk. I still haven’t forgotten my first on Day 3 of the job: “Do you have a Bible?” We have a lot, of course, the study bible at the reference desk had gone missing so I had to hustle to find the most appropriate search string in the catalog. Hint: it’s not “bible”. 
It seems like every week another floppy drive either bites it or bites back. We have some flash drives available for loan, have extension cables to use with our cpu’s (they’re older so the usb ports are in the rear), but students still seem to prefer to carry around all of their work on the same green floppy disk they’ve had since freshman year. To be fair, more and more students (and their parents) come in with flash drives and ask where to plug them in, but is this conversion to flash/jump drives a slow process we just need to buck up and nurture, or should we force them to switch cold turkey? (more…)
Titling posts is so much fun! This won’t actually get me any closer to dear Mr. Darcy, but I’m really looking forward to a lecture happening on my campus on Wednesday.
Jill Heydt-Stevenson, associate professor of English at the University of Colorado, will deliver a lecture on political and sexual humor in Jane Austen’s novels[description from College Events calendar]. I was chatting with the chair of the English Dept. today and he mentioned that this was such a controversial issue for the Janeites (actually I think he may have prefaced that with “old lady”) that it made it into an article in the Chronicle. I’m going to try to read the Ha Ha article (see Stevenson link for citation) before the talk. It’s been a while since I’ve read either Persuasion or Pride & Prejudice, but summer’s coming soon and it’s time to start making the list. On it so far:
- Transit Beirut by Malu Halasa (great bite-sized modern travel stories about the Middle East or Middle Easterners)
- finish the Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
- Ruth Reichl’s new one: Garlic and Sapphires: the secret life of the critic in disguise (she’s just hilarious)
- some Stevie Smith poetry…(to be continued)
It’s a hodge podge of stuff, I really dig short stories, I’m feeling the need for poetry again, so I’ll be exploring that too. I’m going to try to go mostly light with one or two or three heavies ( I want to reread a Fanon biography I have too) thrown in.
What can happen when you can’t figure out where/how a patron found an item…….
Me: Hi! How can I help you?
Patron: I need help finding some books and journals but I’ve never done this before (hands me a handwritten list of titles with call nos. and another list of titles, not clear if these are books or not)
Me: Oh, looks like you have the call nos. already…..(give a brief explanation of how to find them. We’ve gone through half a renovation, it’s confusing and our until very recent lack of signage doesn’t help).
On to the second list. The patron has carefully written down titles, a few last names and what look like volume and issue numbers.
Me: Okay, it looks like you are looking for sociology journals. Some of these are pretty old (early 70’s), you will have to do a little traveling in the library today. (my attempt at humor b/c again, due to the renovation, journals are in 3 different places). We’ll save the fun article available only on microfilm until the end. Patron laughs politely.
(A few of these I just can’t seem to find….)
Me: Did you say you found these in the catalog? (at this point, I’ve tried the catalog, the social science dbases and the Serials Directory. nada)
Patron: Yes I found them by doing a keyword search in HELIN (our library catalog), I’m not really sure…
Okay, I’ll stop here before it gets any more painful. The patron clearly knew more than she thought, but sometimes it can be really tricky to get those clues out of them. When it’s clear to me that I probably only have half (or less) of the info I need to answer a question, I sometimes try to retrace the patron’s steps (in true Encylopedia Brown fashion), keep asking increasingly probing questions until I find what they’re looking for. I think she was probably 85 percent satisified, but what’s bugging me, is why can’t our students differentiate between the catalog and our databases? How do we fix that issue? What’s not getting through?
It’s been one of those fast-moving weeks, my apologies for the delay on my thoughts on Gorman’s talk on April 8. To be fair, Gorman’s talk came at the very end of a really long evening of awards and acceptance speeches, so his talk seemed more reserved (even with the anti-tech zingers that peppered the talk) than I had anticipated. Suggestion for organizers of award-slash-guest-speaker events, please try to keep on schedule. Sometimes, award winning graduate students should be seen and not heard. Back to Gorman’s talk on libraries of today and tomorrow…
“Libraries As Place” on the Endangered List…
On the surface, Gorman said some things that most people would agree with: “the pressure on libraries is tremendous”, referring both to cuts being felt by most public libraries across the country and the increased demand for library services in urban communities. Gorman clearly seems to be passionate about need for library services and parity in funding within inner cities. (more…)
Just trying out the new NEASIST Flickr account. I’m heading to a meeting being held in the location of our May event. I’m going to attempt to send some pics.
Megan Fox uploaded this to the NEASIST Flickr page. Greenwood Press was giving away a Jane Austen Bobble head doll at ACRL last week. Move over Librarian Action Figure…
Not just a phrase for our kind. This is more of a memory jogger for me, but I needed a break this morning from the typical NPR radio fare, so I flipped to Imus just as the editor of the Wonkette blog was saying “it’s a little meta” in response to the gossip about the gossip over whoever will be crowned the new gossip columnist for one of the DC dailies. This topic doesn’t hold much interest for me, but it reminded me of a funny article I read recently comparing the women of hip hop to female bloggers. I can’t recall where I read the article but I’m hoping someone else read it and can remind me. The author essentially drew similarities between the “milk shake” factor in hip hop videos (I believe the author used Lil’ Kim as an example) to female bloggers allegedly needing to be more provocative or outlandish (think of the initial hype over Wonkette) than their male counterparts in order to get any attention (because obviously the content alone wouldn’t be enough, feh.) It was an amusing article but I tossed it into the “boys with their toys” category because of the overall tone. Thinking a little more on what I read regularly online, I don’t believe I’m drawn to a particular voice over another (male v. female). I just let my interest guide me.
I had an interesting conversation yesterday with someone who was preparing a presentation on blogs as a KM tool in the corporate environment for a Marketing class. He was talking about the perceived value of “capturing knowledge” via blogging in the corporate world vs. that same time not spent doing “work” for the corporation. I can relate to this. I worked in the corporate world before becoming a librarian, and charged clients for my time; adding value almost always translated to either finding another service to sell to a client or somehow finding a way to come in under budget. It certainly wasn’t valuable to the company for me to be sitting around doing random tax research or catching up on a huge stack of alerts. So what’s my point here? For those of you blogging from or about libraries, how do you justify/quantify the value of your time spent blogging and not doing library related work? Do you blog in the wee hours of the evening or morning? My job description breaks down the various parts of my responsibilities by (more…)
That’s a total rip from Catalogablog, friend to many a cataloging student, but our cataloger extraordinaire just asked me to show her how to set up a blog she can use to chronicle her thoughts for an upcoming conference. I am going to try to do as great a job as Steven Cohen did when he ran a workshop for NEASIST in the fall of 2003. My memory is slighty fuzzed, but I think he boiled the blogging set up down to 5 minutes. This will be good practice for the staff workshop I’m doing later. Unrelated related: As I mentioned previously, I heard Michael Gorman speak to URI GSLIS alums and guests on Friday. I’ll post my thoughts later tonight. Oh, and Happy National Libraries Week! What are you doing to commemorate the occasion…? Xrefer is offering free access to its XreferPlus product during Libraries Week. We’ve begun direct linking to Xrefer sources on our subject guides, but I still seem to chat up the ready reference books more often than the ready ref dbases whenever I talk to students. Something about the tangible..
