I've always thought wikis would be great for intranets (procedures manuals, obscure stuff that comes up now-and-then, updates) and for classes. I'm a fan of Wikipedia (don't tell my students!) for quick background info, but I don't trust it too far - if I can find problems, there are surely more!
Wikis are really good for specialist geeks - I'd trust a wiki on nanobiology or ambrotypes more than one on the latest Harry Potter movie, just because who cares enough to spam ambrotypes?
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A campus-wide theme
Apropos of nothing, when I interviewed at Syracuse a while ago, they had a neat thing going. They had a campus-wide theme for the year! That year, it was Humor. Engineering students built Rube Goldberg machines, Museum Studies students curated an exhibit from the library's materials, soc students studied humor in communities, med students did humor in medical settings.
It gave everyone on campus, despite their majors, some one thing in common. A symposium kicked it off (with Gary Trudeau, no less!) and Michael Moore among the speakers.
A quote:
Syracuse Symposium is an intellectual festival celebrating
interdisciplinary thinking, imagining, and creating. Our theme this fall is “humor.” Humor is a crucial dimension of our lives, individual and social, but it is not often the subject of academic conversation. We seek to correct that for our campus. Throughout the semester, we will explore topics such as the role of humor in society; the craft of humor; what’s funny and what’s not and why; what are we allowed to poke fun at and what not and why; cross-cultural perspectives on humor; political cartoons; how humor allows us to express things we otherwise cannot; how humor provokes thinking; humor and diversity — the list of possible subjects to discuss is long, as you can imagine.
http://symposium.syr.edu/archives/humor_2004/keynote.html
Other themes included Borders and Imagination, other years. How cool is that! It has to be broad to cover all the fields, but some of the work that came out of it was fantastic!
It gave everyone on campus, despite their majors, some one thing in common. A symposium kicked it off (with Gary Trudeau, no less!) and Michael Moore among the speakers.
A quote:
Syracuse Symposium is an intellectual festival celebrating
interdisciplinary thinking, imagining, and creating. Our theme this fall is “humor.” Humor is a crucial dimension of our lives, individual and social, but it is not often the subject of academic conversation. We seek to correct that for our campus. Throughout the semester, we will explore topics such as the role of humor in society; the craft of humor; what’s funny and what’s not and why; what are we allowed to poke fun at and what not and why; cross-cultural perspectives on humor; political cartoons; how humor allows us to express things we otherwise cannot; how humor provokes thinking; humor and diversity — the list of possible subjects to discuss is long, as you can imagine.
http://symposium.syr.edu/archives/humor_2004/keynote.html
Other themes included Borders and Imagination, other years. How cool is that! It has to be broad to cover all the fields, but some of the work that came out of it was fantastic!
Looking at other blogs
I browsed a little, and went to the Dmoz site (poor abandoned baby!), and lo! the nemesis of the Archives listserve! Don Saklad!
Saklad has been the bane for years, just recently banned again. There has been speculation that Saklad is actually an anagram for some computer IA program, but that would requires intelligence. Maybe he's just a political writer - who could say this with a straight face?
"The hypocritical librarian censors while enunciating principles of intellectual freedom"
http://guidetoproblematicallibraryuse.blog-city.com/e/Weblogs/">http://guidetoproblematicallibraryuse.blog-city.com
Once again Sturgeon's Law is proven.
But elsewise, http://dmoz.org/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information_Science/Weblogs/
is a good guide to a lot of library blogs, though many are just diaries. The Shifted Librarian is a fave on my RSS, but like I said before, I go with reccomendations, rather than browsing. No Time! No Time!
Saklad has been the bane for years, just recently banned again. There has been speculation that Saklad is actually an anagram for some computer IA program, but that would requires intelligence. Maybe he's just a political writer - who could say this with a straight face?
"The hypocritical librarian censors while enunciating principles of intellectual freedom"
http://guidetoproblematicallibraryuse.blog-city.com/e/Weblogs/">http://guidetoproblematicallibraryuse.blog-city.com
Once again Sturgeon's Law is proven.
But elsewise, http://dmoz.org/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information_Science/Weblogs/
is a good guide to a lot of library blogs, though many are just diaries. The Shifted Librarian is a fave on my RSS, but like I said before, I go with reccomendations, rather than browsing. No Time! No Time!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
2.0 and the new catalog
Forget the expensive Endeca backend - the answer is here, I think. Literally, right down the street. LibLime caused a lot of excitement among my library school students last year - the concept of a usable and cheap and customizable catalog that doesn't require a scad of specially trained Voyager geeks!
There's more to come - I heard the praises of Rescarta as opposed to ContentDM. Rescarta has the great advantage of Free and Open Source. Zotero vs EndNote. 2. 0 may not be THE answer, but it's better than the $600,000 Answer.
So tagging isn't LCSH - LCSH isn't all that, anyway. At some point, we'll find a happy medium for precision and usability, but LCSH ain't it, and tagging ain't it, but they're both a good first step. We can't stop in the middle and say it's good enough - 2.0 is all about making it better, about new ideas, about collaboration.
2.0 is library science for science fiction fans - thinking outside the box.
There's more to come - I heard the praises of Rescarta as opposed to ContentDM. Rescarta has the great advantage of Free and Open Source. Zotero vs EndNote. 2. 0 may not be THE answer, but it's better than the $600,000 Answer.
So tagging isn't LCSH - LCSH isn't all that, anyway. At some point, we'll find a happy medium for precision and usability, but LCSH ain't it, and tagging ain't it, but they're both a good first step. We can't stop in the middle and say it's good enough - 2.0 is all about making it better, about new ideas, about collaboration.
2.0 is library science for science fiction fans - thinking outside the box.
Life in photography
Louisville is in the midst of a photographic orgy this month (and I'm missing it!). But details are here.
http://leoweekly.com/?q=node/4917
Maybe an inspiration?
http://leoweekly.com/?q=node/4917
Maybe an inspiration?
technorati
When I get a public blog going - maybe for class this fall - this'll be helpful. Right now, I don't want everyone seeing my rambling, there's enough of that on the web!
I'm not fond of the "Everything in the known universe" blurb - it's just everything in the blogosphere - a definite difference in scale! Or maybe I'm just getting cranky in my elder years - but I KNOW not everything - or even a portion thereof - is online.
Though that may not matter to 99% of people. Sturgeon's Law once again.
I'm not fond of the "Everything in the known universe" blurb - it's just everything in the blogosphere - a definite difference in scale! Or maybe I'm just getting cranky in my elder years - but I KNOW not everything - or even a portion thereof - is online.
Though that may not matter to 99% of people. Sturgeon's Law once again.
Not so delicious
I've been using delicious for a few months, but it's getting out of hand. Having my bookmarks available is great, but disambiguation is killing me. I have LOTs of bookmarks, and a tag cloud isn't helping. I need to have a lot more control of where things are to manage them.
Thus, I've gone to Foxmarks, thanks to Diana's recc, and I'm looking at Zotero to get my act together and on the road. Zotero is a bib manager and notes program that's portable.
Thus, I've gone to Foxmarks, thanks to Diana's recc, and I'm looking at Zotero to get my act together and on the road. Zotero is a bib manager and notes program that's portable.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Rollyo and Zotero
I can see this being very useful. I can also see it taking a long time to set up, for me. I have a huge bookmark directory, and it'd be great - but only 25 sites? I have a hundred just for one topic! Not even thinking about "humanities" as a subject. Guess I'll do it in my spare time....
One exciting discovery today was Zotero. It's a Firefox extension that's a portable citation manager - and let's you annotate, and save full webpages to work offline. I can see this being very useful, not in the least for keeping my students from attacking with pitchforks when I tell them they'll have to do an annotated bib!
Being able to work offline is important for distance learners, who are often on dialup, and often disconnected - in many senses. I'm thinking of using it to organize my lessons better, or at least easier than switching between sites and cites!
http://www.zotero.org/
One exciting discovery today was Zotero. It's a Firefox extension that's a portable citation manager - and let's you annotate, and save full webpages to work offline. I can see this being very useful, not in the least for keeping my students from attacking with pitchforks when I tell them they'll have to do an annotated bib!
Being able to work offline is important for distance learners, who are often on dialup, and often disconnected - in many senses. I'm thinking of using it to organize my lessons better, or at least easier than switching between sites and cites!
http://www.zotero.org/
LIbrary thing
Okay, I admit I wasn't too impressed by this, but then again, my hubby has been telling me for years YOU WORK IN A LIBRARY!!!!!!! WHY ARE YOU BUYING ALL THIS!!!!!
Now that I've actually taken it to heart, I don't have many books to catalog. And I do a lot of reading online now. I could have used this years ago, when I was a hoarder!
Now, if it was an ebay thing, that might be different......
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/gryphonsus
Now that I've actually taken it to heart, I don't have many books to catalog. And I do a lot of reading online now. I could have used this years ago, when I was a hoarder!
Now, if it was an ebay thing, that might be different......
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/gryphonsus
Monday, July 9, 2007
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Sunday, July 8, 2007
Librarians be so cool!
From Sunday's NYTimes - how librarians are the new hipsters, in a retro kinda way. I'm so reminded of The Beav peeking into his teacher's window and finding out that - she EATS! Today, he could find out a lot more on YouTube or her blog. Maybe a LOT more :0
I'm so glad - a year or so ago a former student worker, now an archivist, felt daring about going to a work-related party in a sleeveless dress - she had worn long sleeves there for a year for fear of shocking her co-workers and boss with her very conservative tattoos!
So you too can be hip and Lib2.0 - in fact,I'm thinking of getting that tat, myself. Or is that a sign of middle age in itself?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/fashion/08librarian.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I'm so glad - a year or so ago a former student worker, now an archivist, felt daring about going to a work-related party in a sleeveless dress - she had worn long sleeves there for a year for fear of shocking her co-workers and boss with her very conservative tattoos!
So you too can be hip and Lib2.0 - in fact,I'm thinking of getting that tat, myself. Or is that a sign of middle age in itself?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/fashion/08librarian.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Monday, July 2, 2007
RSS never feeds me chocolate.....
I've had feeds set up for a while, and I admit that I've added and deleted a lot. Some sounded perfect from the description, but were zero content. What I have now is distilled, for the most part, from reccomendations and referals, and some I just glance at headlines and read rarely, and they may soon go. The search tools haven't been more useful than plain Googling for me - maybe because the terms I'm interested in have too many meanings, and I'm not really interested in software and code libraries.
I use Google Reader rather than Bloglines, simply because it's so easy from Gmail. Personal preference, but I like the way it lays out.
For me, that's what it's all about- making the mass of online reading I accumulate managable. Between teaching and work and personal interests, it can get overwhelming. This way I can scan the headlines and look at just what interests me, without the chance of missing something cool.
I use Google Reader rather than Bloglines, simply because it's so easy from Gmail. Personal preference, but I like the way it lays out.
For me, that's what it's all about- making the mass of online reading I accumulate managable. Between teaching and work and personal interests, it can get overwhelming. This way I can scan the headlines and look at just what interests me, without the chance of missing something cool.
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