Tuesday, December 4, 2007

LILI del.icio.us account

Jim has created a http://del.icio.us/ account for all of us to add links to. Contact Jim for the logon/password.

IT Meeting Notes - November 27, 2007

Attending: Sarah McDaniel, Jill Rosenshield, Jean Ruenger-Hanson, Sheila Stoeckel, Karen Dunn, Jim Jonas, Emily Wixson, Bob Sessions, Tom Durkin (notes etc.).

For next time: The next meeting is scheduled for December 27th. We will decide later if we want to hold the meeting on that day. Task: Everyone is to think about what sites or other sources they go to to learn about new IT, and then share those sites with the group.

Emily: Google Docs – http://documents.google.com/
Used for collaborating on documents (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) with a SLIS field BI project student. Found to be OK but not perfect for collaborative editing. Must upload and share each document individually.

Bob: Jing - http://www.jingproject.com/
Bev Phillips has used Jing to create some tutorials, and answering certain reference questions. It is not a completely easy process to use Jing. Generally, you can capture 1 frame or capture a movie. The controls to use the output are simple.
Emily – she is working with a ICIP student using Jing to make tutorials and is learning some techniques from that student.

Karen: Screenhunter - http://wisdom-soft.com/products/screenhunter.htm
Another method for capturing images from applications on your computer.

iGoogle - http://www.google.com/ig
PageFlakes - http://www.pageflakes.com/
NetVibes - http://www.netvibes.com/
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/
Wondering if there are others interested in building widgets and tools for these applications that relate to library products and services. There are some tools out there that can help to automate the tool making process. For example, there is a JSTOR search that one can add to Facebook now. Rebecca at Ebling has done something for Library Express also. Sarah – uses Facebook and iGoogle to aggregate feeds like the Chronicle, and Finds it useful. Wonders if Facebook has an opinion about these tools, since there had been some issues between Facebook and libraries earlier this year. Sheila – the issue had been non-person-based profiles, where the profile represented the entire library. Facebook felt that it violated the TOS. Emily – Gerry Mckiernan has done some work on these tools. How do we justify time spent on this? Are there better tools?

Jim: Springwidgets - http://www.springwidgets.com/
These are customizable widgets that you can self-create and then add to your web page. It is very simple, no programming involved. The code for adding them to the web page is simple. Emily – How does this affect the accessibility of the page? These issues are unknown right now. Bob – how does this alter the loading speed of the page if the person has a slow connection? Also not known.

My Cool Button - http://www.mycoolbutton.com/
A tool that you can use to create button graphics for a web page.

Flock – http://www.flock.com/
A web browser application that offers some useful social networking functionality and add-ons.

SPresent - http://www.spresent.com/v2/
A presentation tool that is Flash based and online. A new alternative to PowerPoint.

Sarah: Software Training for Students – http://www.doit.wisc.edu/training/student/
Madaline Covelli runs the STS program and may be a good library instruction/technology contact person. STS covers a wide variety of relevant applications.

Tom: Slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net/
This application can be used for uploading and sharing PowerPoint slide presentations. This can be set up so that only certain people can gain access to the slides. One drawback: it can take a long time to upload presentations.

Friday, November 30, 2007

October meeting

We opted to attend the Web 2.0 Liaison Forum/Librarian's Assembly Meeting. It was very interesting! Presenters: Dorothea Salo, Sue Weier, and Amanda Werhane.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Complete Notes from IT Interest Group Meeting - August 23, 2007

Meeting Business

Attendees: Walden, Wixson, Jonas, Sessions, Keclik, Rosenshield, Stoeckel, Dunn, Durkin.

Decisions regarding scheduling: We have decided to meet on the 4th Thursday of the month, from noon-1:00PM. The room will move from library to library without a fixed location.

Next Meeting: The next meeting is scheduled for September 27th, at noon. Room location is the 4th Floor instructional space in the CIMC.

The October Liaison Forum conflicts with our October meeting (October 25th). We can discuss a possible re-scheduling of the October LILI IT Interest Group meeting at our September 27th meeting at the CIMC. On the positive side, the Liaison Forum will focus on Libraries and Web 2.0 technologies!

NOTE: the IT Interest group now has a blog to record the http://liliit.blogspot.com/ (thanks Kelli). Everyone should have gotten an invitation. If you didn’t, please let Tom and Kelli know.

Tools Presented

Emily:
Audio in a PDF by Adobe 7, plus a sticky note: At the August LILI retreat, Steve Frye mentioned a professor who uses the audio feature of Adobe 7 to orally review students' papers. Coincidentally, Curran Riley came to the Chemistry Library and installed Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional on a couple of library workstations. The IT forum presented the perfect opportunity to try this technology. The Acrobat 8 help files say that you can use the Record Audio Comment tool to add a prerecorded WAV or AIFF file as a comment or to record and place an audio comment in a document. Audio attachments appear in the Comments List and can be played back on any platform. You can add the "Record Audio Comment" icon to the Comment toolbar. Process: 1. Created a WORD document and saved to PDF. 2. Opened the pdf with Adobe Acrobat 8. 3. Click in the PDF where you want to place the audio comment. 4. In the recording box, click the Record button and then speak into the microphone. When you’ve finished recording, click the Stop button, and then click OK. I sent this file to a faculty member and had him try to open and listen. he was able to hear the sound using Acrobat Reader 5. He was not able to hear the file using the MAC default pdf viewer.
I will continue to test this - especially compatibility. I have a Chemistry faculty member who is very interested in trying this because his students are required to submit their paper to him in pdf format.

Kelli: OSU and NCS games (map plus puzzles; trivia) done with Captivate, Google maps, and HotPotatoes:
Ohio State Orientation Game
http://library.osu.edu/sites/fye/
Make new students aware of library locations, collections, and services
Includes an interactive campus map, eight games, five videos
Design team consisted of three instruction librarians, one part-time graduate student, and one part-time student programmer.
Used Google Map API, Hot Potatoes, and Captivate/Flash

The Information Literacy Game
http://library.uncg.edu/game/
Online board game created by librarians at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Players answer questions in four categories: Choose Your Resource, Searching/Using Databases, Cite Your Sources, Library Wild Card
Al of the game files, images, questions, and instructions are free to download

Sheila: Hot potatoes – easy to use... but what does it do! http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ (Lets discuss this at the next meeting!)

Bob: Noted that Flash-based games could be useful in instruction. Here are some examples he sent via email: http://www.shockwave.com/contentPlay/shockwave.jsp?id=mrgarden
http://webhome.crk.umn.edu/~dlim/itc/interactives.asp (Lets discuss these at the next meeting!)

Jill:
The website I showed: http://www.vialibri.net/ Excellent way to search many
websites at once. The only interface I know is the pick for libraries. Especially recommended, the KVK pick: http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/hylib/en/kvk.html

Technology shown: a yellow pencil and book: The Pencil : a history of design and circumstance / Henry Petroski. TS1268 P47 1990 Checked out at Wendt; in Special Collections reference. I still like dogpile http://www.dogpile.com/

Jim:
Flock rightly bills itself as the social web browser. It has lots of web 2.0 functionality built right in. This includes things like seamless access to your Flickr and del.icio.us accounts as well as a customizable homepage with lots of widgets, a built in feed reader and blog editor. http://www.flock.com/

Netvibes allows users to create a homepage that includes many web tools they use on a regular basis. There are so many options I haven't begun to explore them all. http://www.netvibes.com/

The TimesReader is a new feature of the New York Times. It allows users to download a daily copy of the paper onto their computer. The tool is very well designed and remarkably readable. The download is free for a 30 day trial. Users need to already have (or they can create) a free user account with the Times. Two caveats: 1. After the initial trial the paper will cost $14.95 a month. 2. As of now I think it only works in Windows.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/timesreader.html

Karen: Simsonizeme http://simpsonizeme.com/ , google analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/ (Lets discuss these at the next meeting!)

Monday, August 27, 2007

Info Lit Games from August 23rd Meeting

  1. Ohio State Orientation Game
    • Make new students aware of library locations, collections, and services
    • Includes an interactive campus map, eight games, five videos
    • Design team consisted of three instruction librarians, one part-time graduate students, and one part-time student programmer
    • Used Google Map API, Hot Potatoes, and Captivate/Flash
  2. The Information Literacy Game
    • Online board game created by librarians at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro
    • Players answer questions in four categories: Choose Your Resource, Searching/Using Databases, Cite Your Sources, Library Wild Card
    • Al of the game files, images, questions, and instructions are free to download

Friday, August 24, 2007

Notes from the July 18th IT meeting

Tom Durkin:
These applications/tools might be useful for students who need to take notes when working on papers or projects. I am planning on seeing if I can somehow incorporate one of these into my instruction sessions for RefWorks, Alerts, or the journal literature databases sessions. I will probably use Google Notebook, or perhaps EverNote.

1) Google Notebook - http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/tour1.html
2) (i)NdxCards - a desktop product - http://www.ndxcards.com/
3) Manny's Simple Note Cards (another, somewhat quirky, desktop product) - http://www.softsland.com/mannys_simple_note_cards.html

Jim Jonas:
These web apps might be helpful for posting and editing shared web content, in a working group of perhaps or for managing site content.

4) Google Page Creator: http://pages.google.com/-/about.html - It has the ease of sharing that comes with a wiki, but is even easier to setup and maintain.

5) Link Rolls function in del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/ - This function will create a small bit of javascript that users can embed in their own web pages. The link rolls function is located on the "settings" page.

6) There is another nice bit of note-taking software worth mentioning - it's called EverNote: http://www.evernote.com/en/In addition to regular notes, it lets users clip bits of information from webpages and keep them in their notes.

Welcome to the LILI IT Interest Group Blog


We decided to create a blog at our last LILI IT Interest Group meeting. We will use the blog to share notes from meetings and keep each other up-to-date between meetings. Let me know if you would like permission to write to the blog and don't forget to simpsonize yourself!