While at the ACRL NEC, I also sat in on part of the Interactive Tutorials/Streaming Videos breakout session. Three librarians from BU demoed ShowMe, an interactive tutorial on searching databases. It is modeled after TILT and incorporates ACRL information literacy standards.
I could be wrong here, but whenever I see the word TILT, I think too big, too much and “bandwidth sucker”. It took the BU librarians 4 years to develop and design the product. A testament to the power of collaboration, to be sure, but for those of us who only get one shot to speak and work with select groups of students during a semester and don’t have an Info Lit program or required course, I can’t even imagine how we’d get students to do the tutorial.
I think I’d rather see more scaleable, integrated learning objects. The XSLT workshop I went to this week has started me thinking about how we deliver some content at my library (web pathfinders, Camtasia tutorials, powerpoint and handout links). I don’t have any answers yet, but I know there has to be a way to maximize the limited time I get with students. Part of the answer is going where the students are (yeah yeah everyone’s read the Born With A Chip article and seen the Pew Report by now), but another important part is making it useful (slicing, aggregating and syndicating is making more sense to me by the minute).
[Long post] That was my “away” message on AIM Wednesday while I was attending an XSLT workshop. It felt a little serendipitous b/c I registered prior to hearing Roy Tennant talk about using XSLT to dynamically deliver library content via local skins. The first time I took an XML/XSLT workshop I was sufficiently impressed with my new knowledge, but didn’t really know what I ‘d do with it. Tennant also made mention of slicing content… “Challenges [are just] opportunities from below…” is how Tennant began his Google and Academic Libraries talk at ACRL NEC last Friday. Tennant looked at Google and other commercial products and compared them to library services now as well as some futurey stuff percolating around the country. All of the speakers promised to make their presentations available to the ACRL NEC folks, so check their website for updates. I will also keep an eye out and let you know when they’re up. Highlights [with comments] of Tennant’s talk:
Google Challenge [what Google offers that most catalogs don't]
- Fast effective searching
- Astute ranking tailored to material being searched
- Millions of results handled by sorting best to top
- How presented is more important than number
- Full-text searching triumph over metadata
(more…)
I am heading to the ACRL NEC Spring Conference being held at Rivier College in Nashua, NH. That’s about 2 hours north of Providence. The theme is The Future of Academic Libraries and features talks by Frances Maloy, the Nat’l President of ACRL, Brinley Franklin, VProvost for Libraries at UCONN, and Monsieur Roy Tennant, of the California Digital Library, the XML in Libraries book and Web4Lib. The title of Mr. Tennant’s talk is: “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades: Academic Libraries in a Google World”. Nice title and it sounds like someone’s a Timbuk 3 fan…There are also 3 breakout sessions in the afternoon, and I’m going to the one on interactive tutorials and streaming video.
Just combing the CNI (Coalition for Networked Information) announcement archives and I noticed that last month they announced their feed! So I subscribed to the feed vs the listserv and because I use Thunderbird as my email client (PC IT should cover their eyes at this time), I just refresh my inbox to read the new feeds…Suweeet [Steve Cohen-ism]
The signs of seedling life in my peat pots and the brief lull between the end of the semester and the beginning of summer library projects has me fixating on unplugging. I’ve all but abandoned my Live Journal blog (the place where I’d normally park most of my personal goings on) but reading (as well as reading about writing) is also a way for me to unplug (hmm, maybe I should come up with my own numbered list). On my way back from my consortium’s VR meeting this morning, I caught the tail end of a Boston based NPR show called the Connection. There is a new, young director of the Iowa Writers Workshop (my dream sabbatical). Lan Samantha Chang. I haven’t read any of her work, but I really dug some of the things on her current reading list: Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Love (one of my favorite books), Colette and MFK Fisher. That’s a real blend…
The NEASIST podcasts are almost ready, but in the meantime, for a full account, check out his Top 12 list from his NEASISTpresentation, but here are a few things that jumped out at me. I’ll be looking at this very closely because of some service changes that will be happening here over the summer..More on that in a bit. And, YES, unplug now and again. My current form of unplugging is fencing with RIFAC.
#1 Control your technolust…
Techno-divorce
Knowing when to quit…
Do a pilot project.
#2. Plan for your Users – make this a top priority – user centered info services
a. Telling STORIES – how do we tell uses what we can do for them
Article: “How Libraries and Librarians help”….Joan Dorrantz.
b. Case studies – start small/off the cuff
#3 – Do Your Research
– Evidence-based decision making
– Resources abound
– talk to other librarians
– field trip, anyone..?
Why blog at your library?
- it works/fast easy & cheap/internal: communication for staff/external: selling your message/Gorman?Cronin?
(more…)
I think I’ve finally caught up after the NEASIST program, search committee responsibilities and the regular work stuff. It was a relief to finally get through the stack of journals that have been waiting for me. Nothing like routing list guilt to motivate you. A pile of Choice and BookList journals can give me that nervous stomach feeling in the same way that a backlog of weekly New Yorkers once did. I…can’t…catch…up. (more…)
Spam for instant messaging…Megan’s talking about schools using SMS to communicate to its faculty and students….
Megan Fox’s Taste of New Technologies just began. We were felled a little by the Technolust sword (we don’t have wireless in the space we’re using), but IT was very cool and set up a wired hub. The program is being recording for podcast, so check back here or on the NEASIST blog for availability.
Finals begin tomorrow and this sign in the doorway has done wonders to curb the rampant use of cell phones in seemingly every crevice of the library. Noise was a big comment on our recent LibQual survey. I hope this behavior lasts… Good related read: Hiebert, Jean Tate. “A New Kind of Weeding: It’s Getting Crowded in Here”. College & Research Library News. Vol. 66, No. 4 (April 2005), p. 298-300.
This is the sign I used to pick up Jenny Levine & Michael Stephens at the airport in Providence last night. It was warmly received. They are r&ring before tomorrow’s NEASIST program here at Providence College. Rumour has it (okay Michael tipped me off when he inquired about the possibility of travelling to Fall River MA and Newport RI in one day) that they’ll be visiting the Lizzie Borden house…Have you seen the new NEASIST events blog? If you can’t make it down to the program, you’ll want to subscribe NEASIST’s feed for news on the program, bibliographies, powerpoints, podcasts (YES PODCASTS), a bit of flickr action (click on the image to see my fledgling flickr account), etc.. I have a few days worth of blogging to catch up on. Last week was crazy and I’m a bit grumbled that I didn’t get to work in seeing Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Rickman, Def and Martin Freeman (Tim from the only Office that matters) in one movie…
