New IT Interest Group

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – January 26, 2012

2012-01-27T23:50:00.006-06:00

Here we are in a new year, with many interesting tech ideas before us just waiting to be discovered. Happy 2012!

We began the meeting with a discussion of how patrons with mobile devices such as iPads would likely access and use ebooks available through the EBL platform. It proved to be an interesting and useful experiment. (Many thanks to Ian and Sue for bringing iPads and getting them hooked up to the projector.) We approached the experiment as though we were complete newbies, and went through the entire process that a new EBL user would encounter.

We accessed the EBL database with the iPad and opened a book.
After clicking the book's “Download” tab, in the screen’s lower left there are some non-obvious instructions for downloading the BlueFire app. This app is required to download and use the book. http://www.bluefirereader.com/
If a user were to access the EBL books using a PC, the instructions would direct the user to download and install the Adobe “Digital Editions” application. This is something that public services staff might want to carefully note. http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/ Sue noted that Adobe “Digital Editions” is needed when downloading Overdrive ebooks from the MPL.
At this point, it is not clear how the user is to proceed. After some experimentation we determined that the user must go to the Adobe.com site to create an “Adobe ID.” https://www.adobe.com/account/account-information.html
After logging into our new Adobe ID, we can click the EBL download button that shows up in the download tab for the book. The book is downloaded to our iPad, and is listed in the BlueFire app when accessed.
We did a bit more experimentation, and we can happily report that the ebook is usable on the iPad with the WiFi turned off.

A very cool experiment! A big thanks to everyone for participating.

Ian kept his iPad running, and told us about the new (and great) efficiency app that College and the DoIT Infolabs have put together for accessing the Equipment Checkout System. The app allows students to “Stay informed on the availability and location of hardware that can be checked out from over a dozen locations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison DoIT InfoLabs program.” http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/uwequipment/id439591270?mt=8 It looks fantastically useful. This is exactly the kind of app development that the libraries need too. Ian mentioned that the libraries could benefit from an app that schedules study rooms. It sounds great. Ian encouraged everyone to be sure to check out the UW suite of very helpful campus apps: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mobile-uw/id405951131?mt=8

Tom mentioned the UW “Classroom Media Support” site, which every liaison librarian should know about. The site provides a very thorough overview of campus classroom media and AV equipment, and provides a channel for applying for a pass code to access the “Podium Touch Panel Control Systems” installed in many classrooms across campus. The tutorials cover both new and obsolete technology (laptop access, document cameras, DVD players and VCRs) … pretty much every piece of AV equipment you would use in a classroom http://www2.fpm.wisc.edu/support/

Jim told us about the very useful Edudemic site that focuses on promoting and experimenting with social media in education. In particular, Jim drew our attention to the “100 Teaching Tools You Should Know About” on the site. http://edudemic.com/2012/01/tools-today/ This is a great list. The IT Interest Group has looked at many of these but there are a bunch that we have not played with, yet! We highly recommend taking a look!

Karen told us about an “agriculturally-themed” game called Pig Chase, that lets users interact with REAL PIGS! (Holy Oink!) See this article and the YouTube video: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2012/01/game-on-piggies-ipad-play-hits-the-pigpen.html And here is the game site: http://www.playingwithpigs.nl/ (Yes, they are Dutch pigs. No, we do not know if the pigs will wear wooden shoes.)

Ian finished off the hour by bringing up the debate that has swirled around the proposed SOPA-PIPA legislation and the proposed ACTA treaty. (Search Google News for plenty of news stories on all three.) Ian showed a portion of the informative and humorous (and to the point) video clip about SOPA and PIPA at the Penny Arcade TV site: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/sopa-pipa

Thanks for a great first 2012 meeting. See you next time!

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – November 4, 2011

2011-11-15T20:07:00.002-06:00

Ian, Jim, and Tom made their way to Milwaukee for the 2011 WLA Conference. We held a classic IT Interest Group meeting! It went great and we heard lots of really good ideas from everyone who came to see what we are up to...

We started with a discussion of the principles of the group:

We stick to discussing "technology" issues.
We all explore as newbies.
We stay focused on the goal of "producing creative thought."
Attendance is not required.

NOW, on to the fun part...!

Ian got us started by looking at Photosynth http://photosynth.net/ This is an amazing application that you can use to merge photos in order to create panoramas or 3D views of objects. Ian showed us how to use a mobile device such as an iPhone to take pictures from a central point (such as where you are standing at the moment) and then use Photosynth to stitch the images together. Really amazing! Ian notes that this is useful for making library tours, and mobile games.

Karla (Lakeshore Tech) shared her experience with circulating iPads. She explained that they were trying a variety of mechanisms (including giving users a budget) for allowing users to add apps to the iPads. It was mentioned by another participant that they had circulated the iPod Touch and had used “app vouchers” as the way to grant users the ability to add apps. http://www.apple.com/itunes/education/ Two very interesting ideas!

Amber introduced us to the free TextPad application http://www.textpad.com/ It is useful for manual coding because it uses color to identify tags. It costs $27, but you can use it for free for a while as a demo copy! CNET has a good review here.

Amber also told us about the very handy FireFTP FireFox add-on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fireftp/ This effective FTP client operates within the FireFox browser.

Speaking of fires, Jim fired up an in-session instance of TodaysMeet http://todaysmeet.com/ This really useful web-based application makes creating a participatory backchannel conversation fast, easy, and effective. Our instance from the session is now expired (because you can set the expiration for a very short time - so, sorry, no link) but we did have a good backchannel discussion in our session!

Nancy showed us her LightWedge book reading light: http://www.lightwedge.com/ She mentioned that they illuminate well and also create very little extra light that may bother other people when you use it on a plane, or in a dark conference room! They cost about $35, and look very nice.

Cynthia (Globe University) explained for us her past predicament when helping students that were using Microsoft Works http://www.microsoft.com/products/works/ as their primary way to type their papers. The students were having difficulty printing out their documents. Luckily, she discovered ZamZar http://www.zamzar.com/ which can be used to convert documents from one type into another, and ultimately helped the students to print. This looks very useful!

Marta (Carthage College) explained how she had been using Glogster http://www.glogster.com/ to assist students with creating posters. This fascinating web-application allows you to add text, images, and media into an online “poster” which you can use to demonstrate class projects and presentations in a very engaging way. Cool!

Beth mentioned the helpful GoogleGoggles http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/ application. It allows you to use your mobile device’s camera to capture an image and then use that image as a way to search for information about the object. For example, an image of a book cover can be used to locate the Google Books object. In addition, this app can be used to translate text on the fly from one language to another. That is amazing!

Beth followed up with another useful tool: the Free Technology for Teachers blog: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ She mentioned that it is a really useful place to learn about new technology. Thanks Beth!

The assembled participants then began a short discussion about (short) battery life for mobile devices. Jim helpfully suggested the Android app JuiceDefender http://www.juicedefender.com/ which “improves battery life behind the scenes by intelligently managing the battery-draining components of your phone.” Ian mentioned the cool Minty Boost project http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/ You may not be able to purchase one of these but you can make one! How does Ian learn about this cool stuff?!? Try out the LifeHacker site: http://lifehacker.com/ Another participant suggested using one of the (many) helpful USB adaptors out there. Handy!

Jim showed us the very cool web-based application Topicmarks http://topicmarks.com/ The site allows you to upload PDFs of readings and articles, and then the site then runs a variety of algorithms on the PDF to analyze the text in order to 1) index the article, 2) auto-generate a summary of the article, 3) list the important facts stated in the article. That really is AMAZING!

Jan mentioned the EarthPoint tool http://www.earthpoint.us/ It has many facets and uses, but one helpful application is for converting township/range information into coordinates in Google Earth.

Sarah mentioned the helpful InstaPaper http://www.instapaper.com/ “a simple tool to save web pages for reading later.” She let us know that it will strip the pages (that you save in your account) of all extra content and will keep the article text. This text can later be reassembled into a personal newspaper for you!

Amber finished up the session by mentioning the TechRepublic http://www.techrepublic.com/ site that aggregates many different types and sources of IT information, and is very useful for staying up to date.

We had a GREAT IT Interest Meeting! Thank you to all of the participants. Please start your own group! We would love to meet with you all at WAAL and WLA in 2012.

[To All Participants: If I have your name wrong or if I omitted your institution and you would like to see it listed (or maybe even removed), please let me know. I can edit the post, no problem.]

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – October 27, 2011

2011-11-01T19:27:00.007-05:00

Happy Halloween! This month we met and discussed a few tools in preparation for the Milwaukee WLA Conference in November. (And we had Halloween treats!)

Ian started off the discussion by demonstrating the PhotoSynth http://photosynth.net/ application and the ways that you can use your mobile device’s camera to capture images to compile into a rotating 3D image. (Ian used his iPhone to take continuous images from a central rotation point, and then used PhotSynth to mesh them together into a continuous 3D image.) Very cool!

Nancy discussed the Memorial Library Reference “iHelp2” roaming librarian project. They visit various areas of the library and use iPads http://www.apple.com/ipad/ to help students working on projects. The iPads are fitted with a “HandStand” http://thehandstand.com/ to make it easier to carry the iPad without breaking it. The HandStand also works as an angled prop if the iPad is set on a flat surface. Nancy and the other roaming librarians (the SLIS students are helping with the project too) have found that students in some areas of the library want help with research and in other areas they are studying for tests and do not seem to need help. A significant portion of the assistance is directional.

Carrie R. recently joined the group as a new member. Ding! She described the Wisconsin Uprising game/tour project that she had been working on for some time. This project uses the ARIS tool http://arisgames.org/ to organize and present images, audio, and video about the 2011 protests into an interactive narrative. The media and dialogue text came from a variety of contributors, including herself and other Folklore Program affiliates. In total, there are 90 media assets in the project. It took a lot of time and work to put it together. It looks great!

Nancy also mentioned the new Ask A Librarian SMS Texting project. It was recently featured in a news release. The SMS text chat is handled via LibraryH3lp. As usual, each text string (both incoming and outgoing) is limited to 140 characters. We can only imagine the spike in usage that will be forthcoming!

See you all at WLA!

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – September 22, 2011

2011-10-14T21:36:00.005-05:00

The group discussed Google+ https://plus.google.com/ General open membership for Google+ has opened up, and its popularity has grown significantly. However, the group also noted that it is still a long way from overtaking Facebook.

The group discussed MPL and their use of Overdrive http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/databases/overdrive Nancy directed us to their explanatory page, and as the MPL site explains, it is “a library-purchased subscription to eBook, audiobook, music and video content. Madison Public Library, as part of the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium, has access to this shared collection. Using your library card, you can browse for titles to download to your computer or a variety of portable devices including MP3 players, iPods, iPads, and smartphones. OverDrive content does not yet work with Kindle, but is expected to in the fall of 2011.”

The group discussed the recent changes to Facebook http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20110755-17/facebook-changes-creeping-out-some-customers/ Ian pointed out that the FaceBook product “is you.”

Tom mentioned the recently upgraded Google language tools http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en , which now include diacritic keyboard support and audio pronunciation enhancements.

Ian told us about the fascinating FoldIt game http://fold.it/portal/ that researchers at the University of Washington designed which used gamers to solve problems with protein molecular structure research. HIV researchers were having difficulties while trying to “decipher the structure of a protein called retroviral protease, an enzyme that is key to the way HIV multiplies” and gamers were able to figure out the protein structure in 10 days. http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20108365-247/foldit-game-leads-to-aids-research-breakthrough/

Jim reported in about the success of the Mini Golf event at the Party at Helen C. Sounds like it was a lot of fun! http://www.college.library.wisc.edu/party/

Ian mentioned to the group that he is interested in collecting a list of “Librarian Recommended Apps.” Dave L. might then post the list to the LWS. These apps would include anything (like barcode readers) that our users might find useful in the course of their university work and library research. Please forward your ideas to Ian.

See you all next month!

Measuring Broadband America

2011-09-10T18:16:00.002-05:00

http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-america

I thought that these specific sections were interesting:

1) Actual Versus Advertised Speeds

2) Performance Variation by Service Tier

3) Summary of Findings

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – July 28, 2011

2011-09-10T15:24:00.000-05:00

Jim started out our meeting by showing us the interesting TodaysMeet http://todaysmeet.com/ as the site states, it “helps you embrace the backchannel and connect with your audience in realtime. Encourage the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs.” Essentially, this tool can be used to create an “official” backchannel for classes or discussions, similar to the way that Twitter and texting are already used. The tool creates an auto-generated URL for sharing, and will send out a final transcript when you are done. It is completely free to sign up and create an account.

Ian then introduced us to the similarly “low startup hurdle” tool called Doodle: http://doodle.com/ it allows you to create a “poll” for determining the best times that a group of people are available to meet. The system creates a matrix of self-reported availability. As we all know, the meting time finder in WiscCal is frustrating and unwieldy. This useful tool might help! (The single drawback, noted by Lee, is that if it becomes popular and if you receive many Doodle requests it can get confusing.)

Ian then mentioned the helpful Screencast-O-Matic tool: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ This tool is similar to Jing. Though it lacks some of Jing’s helpful features, it does not require downloading a client application. It is web-based, so there are no permissions to worry about when using a public computer.

The group then turned its attention to the Meebo tool: http://www.meebo.com/ This now-classic IM/chat aggregator works as a handy web-based and smart-phone based application. It also works on the iPad!

Jim mentioned the very cool JayCut tool: http://jaycut.com/ The site allows you to upload and edit video for free. The interface is similar to iMovie in layout and functionality. Fortunately for the JayCut company, but maybe unfortunately for users looking for a new free account, JayCut was purchased this summer by ResearchInMotion [Blackberry]. The site is no longer registering new users. We are all wondering what the future of JayCut will be. Good luck to the JayCut team and ResearchInMotion.

Ian showed us the useful ScreenChomp app for the iPhone/iPad: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/screenchomp/id442415881?mt=8 It allows a user to make simple drawings and handwritten text then share it with another iPad/iPhone user. Cool!

Tom introduced the group to the Zinio site: http://www.zinio.com/ This site posts digital versions of print magazines online for use via iPad or smartphone. The interesting thing about this site is that it preserves the original text, images and exact page layout of the original print edition. It is not clear what the file format is for the content, as it is protected by DRM. The site has a search feature and a fairly substantial variety of primarily popular magazines in their catalog. It is possible to obtain both back issues and subscriptions for new issues, but the back issues do not go back very far.

The group then discussed Google+ https://plus.google.com/ for a few minutes: Ian noted that the “Circles” functionality was an interesting innovation on the primary friending utility of social networks. It allows you to specify categories or circles of contacts. It will be interesting to see where Google+ goes in the next year.

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – June 23, 2011

2011-06-24T19:27:00.003-05:00

Ahh, summertime in Madison... The GLS Conference and the NMC Conference were held recently and they sounded fascinating. Several of our members attended. ALA is coming up and other conferences are on the way too...

Tom C. started our discussion this month. He is interested in maybe planning and developing a game focused on encouraging more extensive use of Music Library resources. He became interested this topic after listening to the OCLC/Library Journal “Play, Learn, Innovate” online symposium: http://www.oclc.org/innovation/ Tom heard Kurt Squire and Erika Halverson discuss educational games, and he had also heard about the ARIS platform, and wondered about how he could use this to help music students. Ian brought up the excellent point that game building is a skill and an art, and good educational games are successful because of the game mechanics. Great data alone won’t make a great game. There is a “meta-skill-set” that is very beneficial for a game designer to have when creating a new game. The GLS group meets about every month to discuss new educational games. Game fun-ness is very important! Joe furthered Ian’s point by showing a great video from the Escapist Magazine about “Gamifying Education” The group then discussed a number of examples of useful educational games. Anna mentioned a “mini golf” style game/tour in libraries that has also been used as a fund raiser. Joe mentioned that many summer reading programs are presented as games in that the reading challenge is accumulative and frequently based on “levels.” Joe also mentioned that Steve B is building a game to encourage citation comprehension. Tom C. further explained that in the study of Music, the community tends to be split between academic researchers and instrumentalists. He is looking for a way to “cross-train” the students so that they will be familiar with the research resources that are available to both tracks. Kathleen mentioned that she has frequently used card sorts as a way of organizing her ideas for future projects. Ian followed up with an explanation of an interesting-sounding game that was played at the GLS conference: each attendee was issued a set of topic cards that were used to frame debate and discussion on a variety of points. As people met, they would deploy their cards to create a discussion. Whoever “won” the discussion collected all the cards. The debates continued in pyramidial elimination until only two debaters remained. They debated using all of the collected cards. Ian also described the “hall of failure” (look near the bottom of the list) where people would describe projects that failed and explain why they failed and what they learned. Kathleen mentioned Elliot Masie’s rule for presenters that the only get one slide per presentatio n. Kathleen also mentioned that Masie had done some work on mind-mapping tools. Ian mentioned that at the NMC conference, Jared Lanier had spoken about three books that looked interesting: 1) What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelley; 2) You Are Not a Gadget, by Jaron Lanier; 3) Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, by Douglas Rushkoff. Looks like some very interesting summer reading! Both Joe and Ian expanded on the discussion by pointing out that Jared Lanier was concerned about the cyclical recycling/repetition of culture online without new creativity added, and the detrimental aspects of free (non-paid for) information for creative people who are trying to make a living off of their creativity.

The group then switched gears and began to look at some tools...

Anna showed us the fantastic Bubble https://bubbl.us/ mind mapping tool. Very easy and intuitive to use! Anna also showed us the site that explains the revolutionary Lytro Light Field Camera http://www.lytro.com/ that allows you to refocus the image after you have taken the picture! Anna mentioned the Forsquare app Checkmate https://foursquare.com/app/checkmate that allows you to auto-check-in to your favorite venues as you arrive without having to do anything. And finally, the Fodey “newspaper clipping generator” http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp that allows you to create your own news clippings (for “entertainment purposes only” of course, as they used to say). Whew! Thank you Anna!

Kathleen asked the group for reflection regarding her work on ISIS documentation. She has used Captivate and Word documents as a way to capture the many “how-to” tutorials she has created. The group also recommended DoIT’s KB tool and Confluence Wiki subscriptions as alternate possibilities.

Tom D. finished up the hour by mentioning the Hidden Mac app http://hiddenapp.com/ that allows you to monitor your laptop if it is stolen, including using the built in camera. One recent story of MacBook retrieval was chronicled in the http://thisguyhasmymacbook.tumblr.com blog.

See you all next month! Good Luck Katy!

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – May 26, 2011

2011-05-27T18:54:00.003-05:00

Back in Madison for our May meeting! Nice.

Katy started us off by showing MERIT’s newest hardware acquisition: a very cool, compact camcorder from Samsung (I believe it is the Samsung SMX-C10 Touch of Color Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom). Katy explained that the School of Education students need to complete Field Practicum type experiences which must also be recorded and presented for class. MERIT had existing camcorders that recorded onto DV Tape but that format was unwieldy, and the camcorder to computer upload times were excessively long (files were uncompressed AVI). After researching a variety of products, they decided on the Samsung recorder because they use removable flash memory and they record in AVCHD format, which uses the non-proprietary MPEG-4 AVC video coding. MERIT invested in reasonably large memory cards (16GB) and those will store about 380 minutes of video. The rechargeable batteries are easily removable (160 minute life before recharge), and the button controls are logical. Using the recorder with a PC is simple and USB based, and the recorder comes with its own internal video editing software that installs easily. For students who wish to edit more extensively, MERIT has been recommending students do their main editing with either Windows Movie Maker, or iMovie depending on what they have access to. As for how MERIT did their research, Katy said they read A LOT of reviews.

Katy then brought up the really fantastic, free, web-based video editing tool JayCut http://jaycut.com/ She mentioned that lately MERIT had been recommending this tool over Windows Movie Maker or iMovie because JayCut it is web and cloud-based, so students do not need to have any special editing software. It is important for students to begin using this application from the beginning of the editing process, starting from the upload of the raw video (because it does not accept half edited files from other applications.) The tool can accept still images to be worked into videos, and can capture directly from your webcam too. The actual editing is reminiscent of iMovie, and offers standard tools like title text, subtitling, clip transitions and effects. (Music clips can be edited into your videos too, but we did not play with that part.) The editing appears to be pretty logical and easy.

Jim introduced us to the Grovo http://www.grovo.com/ video-based tutorials site. It looks great! The site hosts a fairly long list of nicely put together video tutorials on a variety of IT topics, many related to social media/tools. You can sign up for an account for free.

Jim then also showed us the MakeUseOf http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/ site which includes a fairly long list of PDF-based guides for a wide variety of IT topics like popular computing, hardware, and social media. It looks really helpful!

On the topic of cloud based applications, Jim told us about a fantastic trial deal from Amazon. It is called the Amazon Cloud Player. For certain audio purchases, Amazon would give you a free account (with 20G of storage!) for uploading music. The account stays free for a year, after which you have to pay $20/year. Jim has found that while using his Android, he prefers the Amazon MP3 music service (“MP3 Downloads” when searching Amazon), and that it is better than iTunes for his purposes. Purchasing additional music from Amazon does not use up space in your 20G (space is added). Syncing the stored/purchased music with your device is really simple: you just scan in the QR code on the Amazon webpage after you have logged in. Cool.

Tom jumped in to tell us about a few things he has seen: the Unsubscribe site http://www.unsubscribe.com/ which you can use to hopefully tame your many email list subscriptions. “With the click of a button, users instantly send unwanted mailing lists to Unsubscribe.com for safe removal.” And then he described the Pico Pocket Projector PK101 which looks pretty cool. This extremely tiny (1.97 in wide x .59 in high x 4.06 in deep) LCD projector is LED illuminated and USB powered. It can also run off of a battery. This projector is designed to interact with an iPhone or other mobile device, and it is not really ideally created for use with a laptop computer. However, you can use it with a laptop if you also get a VGA to S-Video converter box. Tom also mentioned ValleyWag... http://gawker.com/valleywag/ which you can explore on your own.

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – April 28, 2011 (at WAAL!)

2011-05-25T21:58:00.006-05:00

Hey IT Interested! This month we met at WAAL to hold an IT Interest Group Meeting as a session. Due to the amazing and fascinating participation of many people, the session was FANTASTIC! So, here we go: after emerging from a cloud of smoke and pyrotechnics, we all got down to business...

Ian, Jim and Tom began with a discussion of the principles of the group:
1) The first rule is that we stick to discussing "technology" issues.
2) We all explore as newbies.
3) We stay focused on the goal of "producing creative thought."
4) People show up as their time and interest dictates.

Though we want the group to have as few rules as possible, these rules for the group have helped to keep the group going over a period of several years (since 2007!). Please see the handout about the principals here. And the handout about the group resources is here.

After our overview, we discussed a series of very interesting new tools and ideas:

Ian got us all started by discussing the very exciting ARIS game design platform for mobile devices. http://arisgames.org/ We watched a short video http://arisgames.org/demo/, and then Ian designed a simple game right before our very eyes. (I am really hoping we can eventually get that can of soda, as I am very thirsty.) Ian described the Global Game Jam http://arisgames.org/global-game-jam-2011/ that ARIS held this spring (April 18-20). Cool.

Next, Joe jumped right up to the podium to describe Compfight (http://compfight.com/ ), a very good way to search Flickr for images and then filter for “Creative Commons.” It works really well, and very fast!

Then Jennifer told us about the useful Evernote iPad app http://www.evernote.com/about/download/ipad.php, that assists you with note taking. It has the ability to sync between the desktop and the cloud. (Hope I got that right!) A similar version exists for smartphones like the iPhone. Found to be very helpful!

Louise told us about the very cool NetGalley http://www.netgalley.com/ site that provides you with free “galley” versions of upcoming books (especially novels) for FREE! You can add the galleys to your Kindle, Nook, or iPad. Louise notes that the publishers represented are not the biggest multi-nationals, but the texts are usually quality, and she has read a variety of good books at this site.

Tomissa introduced us to the fascinating and useful Shelfari http://www.shelfari.com/. The site offers a variety of functions, including the ability for users to “build a virtual bookshelf” to share with friends or the general public. One of the ways for users to share a bookshelf is to create embeddable widgets that display side scrolling visual booklists. (The images come from Amazon.) This could be a great way to promote collections and new acquisitions!

Jodi demonstrated the Mobile Me site http://www.me.com/ which provides a way to track and manage mobile devices. Jodi was using it to track and remotely wipe iPads that her library circulates to users. This could be very helpful in cases of theft or “reluctant tech return syndrome.” Jodi mentioned that there is a similar tool for Android called Lookout http://www.mylookout.com/.

Jim demoed the unbelievable and amazing tool Topicmarks http://topicmarks.com/. It is very hard to describe how mind-boggling this tool is without visually showing it, but here goes: The site allows you to upload PDFs of readings and articles. The site then runs a variety of algorithms on the PDF to analyze the text in order to 1) index the article, 2) auto-generate a summary of the article, 3) list the important facts stated in the article, 4) build a keyword list to describe the article, and 5) summarize facts about the article. Wow! This could be an amazing study aid for anyone.

Anna showed us the very interesting “micro-blogging” tool Yammer http://www.yammer.com/. It has functions similar to Twitter, but is built to be based on a social network created from a local email domain. In their words, it “brings together all of a company’s employees inside a private and secure enterprise social network.” So, basically it offers the benefits of Twitter while offering some control to the network admin over who sees what, and who can post. (I think we will see more of this kind of useful innovation within organizations.)

Dorothea finished off the session by reminding us all of the critical importance of good security. Accounts with simple passwords get hacked. Posted passwords http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Security-by-PostIt.aspx are always a bad idea. Dorothea recommends reading the “Usability of Passwords” http://www.baekdal.com/tips/password-security-usability article by Thomas Baekdal. A three word passphrase separated by hyphens may make a good password.

I want to thank everyone who came and listened, and I want to especially thank everyone who participated by sharing their ideas and discoveries! Amazing! We hope to see you all again in the future! (Please comment!)

New Facebook Group!

2011-04-22T13:10:00.002-05:00

Hey Again!
Courtesy of Jim, we have a Facebook Group. Huzzah!
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_201584779860211

New Twitter Account!

2011-04-22T11:27:00.001-05:00

Hey IT!
Courtesy of Ian, we have a Twitter account. Hooray!
http://twitter.com/#!/Lib_IT_Interest

April Meeting? Come Join us at WAAL!

2011-04-06T20:10:00.004-05:00

The April meeting will be at WAAL! Come on! Join Us!
IT Interested? Encouraging IT Experimentation in the Library http://www.wla.lib.wi.us/waal/conferences/2011/programs.html#thursday "Come join UW-Madison librarians to learn about a fun way to encourage library staff experimentation and interest in new technology." Jim "The Media Master," Ian "The IT Kid," and Tom "The Notetaker" will converge on WAAL this year to host a gen-u-ine It Interest Meeting.

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – March 24, 2011

2011-04-06T19:56:00.007-05:00

We had several new members attend this month. Excellent!

Lia started us off by demonstrating and telling us about http://vyou.com/ a very interesting video-based question answering system. Users can set up an account to accept questions from the public. Later the user can compose their video reply to answer the question. Cool! The group noted that it would be best for user accessibility if the system has the ability to add captions like YouTube, or accept and properly display pre-captioned videos.

Ian continued the conversation by drawing attention to a new email list administered by University Communications that is focused on social media. Ian recommends that if you wish to join the list, send an email to the following address: join[dash]social[dash]media[at]lists[dot]wisc[dot]edu Ian notes that the list is very active!

Joe let us know that the ARIS Global Game Jam is coming up: April 18-20th. http://arisgames.org/global-game-jam-2011/ The event will include people all over the world coming together (online and in person) focus on ways to use the ARIS engine for creating games and mobile media. The engine can be used to create mobile scavenger hunt or tour games that can also interact with QR codes. Many other games and uses are also possible. If you would like a better idea of what ARIS is, take a look at this demo video: http://arisgames.org/demo/

Joe also mentioned that the Madison Public Libraries http://dbooks.wplc.info/ had begun loaning e-books for iPhones and iPads. (No Kindle compatible versions.) Joe notes that the DRM as applied limits use to 7 days. It seems to be a popular service already! The group then discussed e-books and patron-driven acquisitions in general. Ian noted that College Library has a program that allows users to check out Kindles and iPads. https://www.college.library.wisc.edu/ereaders/#overview Part of the program also allows users to choose the e-books that are accessible on the readers.

Barbara showed the group some of the work that Laura S. and others at Steenbock Library put into getting some of their library instruction sessions recorded and online in YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/user/SteenbockLibrarians Barbara said that the project started when the snow day interfered with some students ability to attend their required library instruction session. Laura recorded the sessions for the students to catch up on their work. They used iMovie http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/ to edit the videos for uploading. Apparently, YouTube includes a captioning tool (based on a text file attachment) that allowed Laura to make the videos more accessible. Barbara mentioned that getting the several videos recorded, edited, and uploaded took about a week (from beginning to end) but less than that amount of time for the actual work to be completed. Ian mentioned that idwog is looking at options for library video production, and best practices. Lee mentioned that the library web site has to conform to accessibility standards, so captioning would be required for any video solution. Lia wondered about how rights in YouTube would work because of the EULA/TOS that YouTube requires http://www.youtube.com/t/terms Lee mentioned that as university employees, the YouTube TOS versus university copyright ownership issue is unclear, because it is likely that employees do not have the legal ability to give away university rights.

For our next meeting, the group wants to look at Google Apps! SEE YOU ALL NEXT TIME!

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – February 24, 2011

2011-03-10T21:46:00.004-06:00

OK! Wow, it was a while since our last meeting! But this one was good...

Joe started off the meeting by telling us about his very creative and interesting “library game” for mobile devices. http://bit.ly/LibTelo1 Based on discussions in the Mobile Discussion Group, Joe designed and created an experimental game that replicates a library search process in order to train users how to do library research. Joe chose the topic of “writing a paper about the history of the discovery of DNA” as the frame for the game narrative. He used iMovie (clips posted in YouTube) and QR codes on cards placed in physical books to engage and immerse the player in the experience. Cool! Ideally the player would have an iPhone or Android to read the QR codes.

Tom continued the discussion by introducing the group to some iPhone and Android emulators for testing mobilized web content: For iPhone http://www.testiphone.com/ and http://iphonetester.com/ both are web-based and seem to work relatively well. During the discussion we were able to compare the display in the emulator to an iPhone and it turns out that the background colors and font colors in the emulators can be somewhat incorrect, but the layout looks correct. We also talked about the Android emulator http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html without using it. That tool requires a download and installation (and is really designed for developers...)

Nancy pointed out the very useful iPhone app that you can use (with a Chase Bank account) to take a picture of a check that you want to deposit in your own account and the check amount will be automatically deposited. No bank visits, and you can discard the paper check yourself. Nancy saw this on the ever useful NYT column/blog by David Pogue: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/technology/personaltech/30pogue.html

Nancy then brought up the merits of password management tools like http://lastpass.com/ and 1password http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password These tools help you to safely manage your many, many passwords without resorting to a single easily crack-able password.

Nancy also introduced us to the very cool “light wedge” http://www.lightwedge.com/LightWedge-2-0-Rechargeable-Book-Light personal reading light that will not distract or bother others in a darkened space. I can definitely see airline and conference session uses for this!

Karen inquired with the group about portable external hard drives for Macs. Karen said that she had been looking into WesternDigital products http://www.wdc.com/en/products/external/portableformac/ and that the New Egg site http://www.newegg.com/ had been helpful for reviewing a variety of products. The group continued to discuss the relative merits of USB versus FireWire, and then...

Dorothea let us know about the very recent switch that Apple has made to the “ThunderBolt” port and connector: http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/ “Thunderbolt is a revolutionary I/O technology that supports high-resolution displays and high-performance data devices through a single, compact port. It sets new standards for speed, flexibility, and simplicity. And it makes its debut in the new MacBook Pro.” So, say good bye to FireWire!

Jim introduced us to the Roku Box player http://www.roku.com/roku-products?gclid=CKeHhMPIxacCFcfsKgod7hcXDw that can be used with NetFlix, Amazon, and Hulu content as well as a variety of other streaming providers. It can work off of your home wireless network and it appears that the pricing is pretty affordable!

Anne mentioned that she was planning to get some noise canceling headphones soon http://reviews.cnet.com/best-noise-cancelling-headphones/ and that they would be great for working in her office!

Tom finished up the hour by mentioning the handy wireless headphones http://reviews.cnet.com/wireless-headphones/ he had received recently and a USB powered laptop cooling pad http://www.belkin.com/uk/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=471006 . No more cords to yank and no more baked legs.

A good first 2011 discussion. See you all in March!

New IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – October 28, 2010

2010-11-04T20:51:00.004-05:00

Ian started the discussion off by demonstrating the new (still in development) UW-Madison Campus iPhone app. It looks very handy! The functions include a campus news tracker, an interactive map, a directory, and a link to campus related video, as well as other functions. Ian is also very interested in bringing together library system and other campus partners to form a group to work on mobile technology issues related to the libraries.

Karen alerted us to the very useful Charity Navigator website: http://www.charitynavigator.org/ From this site you can get information about many of the charitable organizations that you see advertized, and then make a more informed decision regarding your potential donations. Nancy followed up with a suggestion to not forget about the Foundation Directory Online. From the (i) file: “A web-based database from the Foundation Center, a foundation-supported clearinghouse of information on private funding sources, Foundation Directory Online Professional is available in Memorial Library only.”

Dorothea directed us to the very intriguing “Hacking the Academy” book. It was compiled (under the expert direction of Dan Cullen, from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University) by crowd-sourcing the content in one week. http://hackingtheacademy.org/ There is a section on libraries! http://hackingtheacademy.org/libraries/ “In keeping with the spirit of hacking, the book will itself be an exercise in reimagining the edited volume.” It looks fascinating. Dorothea notes that the purpose was to test the limits of what counts as scholarship and scholarly publishing. The directions that publishing and scholarship are following are many, and varied.

Joe raised the issue of UW-Madison’s creation of official check-in points versus user created check-in points for the same locations in FourSquare: http://foursquare.com/ For example, the Memorial Union has an officially created UW-Madison “presence” http://foursquare.com/venue/103173 . The group discussed the various merits of social media where you check-in. Ian noted that though this and similar applications have a core of followers, it is not yet used widely.

William pointed out the extremely useful W3C “mobileOK checker” http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ It works similarly to the other validators to return potential problems with mobile sites when a link to a mobile optimized site is submitted. That tool may turn out to be critical in the future as we develop more mobile-optimized pages.

We all watched the YouTube video “The Twitter Experiment - UT Dallas” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8 It was interesting. The students seemed to take it seriously, and the professor found it useful. Dorthea noted that it looked like they were using TweetDeck http://www.tweetdeck.com/ to aggregate the various tweet feeds from the students. Ian noted that he has seen times when the Twitter backchannel overcame the “official” messaging platform during a Webinar.

Tom finished up the hour by playing a couple of additional YouTube videos related to Augmented Reality. One of the really interesting things that is developing out of augmented reality for mobile devices is the ability of the mobile application to interact, interpret, and augment physical objects dynamically in ways that enhance their already existing informational nature. A couple of examples are: “Augmented Reality GIS Maps” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFwzFby2eNo and “Augmented Reality Furniture Instructions” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVb5jPr-VuI

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – September 23, 2010

2010-10-04T18:08:00.003-05:00

September is always busy for everybody. We had a quick discussion this month, wedged in-between many meetings.

Anne started the discussion, noting the Zotero Everywhere tool upgrade that Zotero had enabled. This will free Zotero from being client-based (now it will be both client and web-based) , and they also set up an API to open it up for “web and mobile access to Zotero libraries.” That sounds like a good change.

Leah noted the recent announcement that the entire volume of Twitter posts would be permanently archived by The Library of Congress. “Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. That’s a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions.” Leah also mentioned that “This American Life” has a twitter account.

Dianna alerted us to the interesting “Daily Beast” tech website. On the topic of “Mobile Learning Environments” Dianna noted a highlight on “14 best apps for college students.” This is an interesting place to start if we want to design apps for campus.

The discussion then moved to a general discussion of smartphone apps for campus. Joe suggested, and we all seemed to come to the same conclusion, that apps should be simple, single-topic-oriented, geography-relevant, and assist people to achieve goals in a self-service environment. App bundlers do exist. Ian noted that UW Madison is opening up app development and creation to students, thought some kinds of university data (grades, home addresses, etc) would probably be off limits. All UW-Madison campus aps are currently designed for the iPhone, but in the future other platforms will be allowed.

Anne reminded us about 4Square and mentioned that universities were beginning to take over the task of managing locations “officially.” We suspected this partially has to do with maintaining control over branding and institutional experience, as well as interest in using social networking tools to promote the university in a fun way.

Leah noted the ambivalence that many institutions currently have toward social networking tools. Some intuitions promote their use while others have used them to terminate employees. The group seemed to agree that laws and official practices have yet to catch up with everyday life.

Joe mentioned the new Gmail “undo send” tool that allows you to add a timer to “sent” mail. When you send an email with “undo send” active, it is not quite “sent” until a timer runs out. That time hopefully gives you the chance to change your mind, if you need to. I wish I had that tool for WiscMail...

Jim finished up the hour by introducing us all to the very cool SoundCloud site/tool. The site allows people to post musical clips, mostly self-produced (from what I can tell), in order to build communities of appreciation and critique. People can comment on abd associate images with various moments in the audio file. It is a facinating way to build a social network of creative people and those who appreciate their music.

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – August 26, 2010

2010-08-29T00:27:00.005-05:00

This is the busiest time of the year, but the LILI IT interest Group met once again! We had a new member attend: Joe from MERIT! (Ding!) It was a great meeting as always. And, Nancy brought fresh Kettle Corn. Perfection!

Ian started us off by describing the College Library House Party to be held on Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010, from 7-11 p.m. There will be food, fun, games... Ian notes that if anyone wants to help out, please contact Kelli. The set-up will start at 3pm.

Jim demonstrated ways that you can use COLOR in Gmail to organize your mail. If you filter your mail with labels, then apply colors to the filters, the colors will appear for each message. A great visual way of organizing your email. Jim also mentioned that Google Labs has many tools that you can add to your Gmail account. There is a calendar tool, and a tool called Rapportive that “shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.” It consolidates data from FaceBook, Twitter, etc into your Gmail account.

Jim also demonstrated the new “Call Phone” tool that has been added to Gmail. “Call anywhere in the US and Canada for free and get low rates for other countries with this small plugin — right from within Gmail.” It is very similar to Skype. You can dial an individual computer or a phone. That is very cool. Jim notes that this could be used for reference services.

Katy showed us all the very useful Meebo site/tool which gives you the ability to conglomerate multiple chat services into one interface. Fantastic! You can use Meebo on your iPhone, and it links out to Facebook and other social software also. This tool is entirely web based, so no downloads are required. One important function that it includes is the ability to separate work chat from home chat.

Ian told us about the very cool ebook reader pilot that College Library is coordinating. College will have both Kindles and iPads for checkout. The ebooks that are “circulated” will be chosen by the patrons themselves. Each user will sign up on a calendar to reserve the reader, and then will be granted $20 for choosing new ebooks to add to the pool. The patron will also be able to choose existing books to add to the reader during the reservation process. The Amazon accounts are separate from the reader devices, so the readers will be wiped and reloaded after each checkout. College will be using LibraryThing as the way to keep the collected ebooks organized.

Nancy mentioned the very thought provoking articles in the “Your Brain on Computers” series from the NYT. We all remembered the related article by Nicholas G. Carr “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and the related Book by the same author “The Shallows” The changes that reading and literacy in our society are undergoing are substantial and fundamental.

Ian provided us with a good overview of the Layar Augmented Reality building tool. It allows users to create or use AR many filters with their mobile device. Ian suggests that an AR filter for campus libraries might be possible, though he hasn’t tested out the builder part of the application quite yet.

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – July 22, 2010

2010-07-27T14:20:00.003-05:00

Our July meeting was fascinating. This time, our notes are really more of a recorded dialog. (Though this is not really word for word...) I was enthralled with the new hardware we all looked at!

Katy started us off by showing us all the new iPads that were recently purchased to be checked out by School of Ed. affiliates from MERIT. They have 4 iPads, and they have also purchased portable keyboards and bags to go with them. Katy also brought her personal Kindle to show the size and weight difference. For reading books, she prefers the Kindle.

Katy also mentioned that staff in Special Education are thinking of creating apps for the iPad that will allow people to use them as “speaking boards” (a tool for people who are not able to speak). This would allow them to pre-load phrases and then touch the app's icon for it to speak out loud for them.

Lia noted that Gourmet Magazine, though closed by Conde Nast, has started up again as an app for the iPad. It sounds very handy! (Next from Steve Jobs: the iVeg: It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries! Wait, is an iPad waterproof?)

Jim remembered that Dell also makes an all-in-one computer. Called the “Studio One” line: they have a 19” screen, and you can hook up a cordless mouse and keyboard. The prices are in the $400-$700 range.

Lia mentioned that Wendt has an iPad... for staff only! She has used it and liked it.

Anne mentioned that Yelp works very well from the iPad (and iPhone or Droid). A good reviews site!

Ian followed up with a mention of the LAYAR augmented reality browser tool that can be used to work with reviews data and overlay it to produce AR. He is working on a few projects now...

Jim mentioned Zillow the tool that gives home values and listings for houses for sale. There is an app that uses the AR, and it sounds amazing! Like other AR, it works with the camera. Displaying a house also displays the value.

Ian discovered that the iPad keyboard (brought by Katy from MERIT) is compatible with the iPhone. It hooked up nicely!

Jim suspected that the keyboard will be less popular for checkout than the iPads themselves.

Ian wondered how powerful the next generation iPad will be.

Lia also felt that since the iPad is still “first generation” that later models will be more powerful.

Anne wondered how powerful though... She thought that the next improvements would focus on portability and affordability: lighter and cheaper. This is because it is more of a browsing tool as opposed to a production tool.

Ian mentioned that if gamers focus on the iPad they would probably get faster processors/video cards.

Katy said that she uses a Mac Mini for her media. That works well.

Anne also agreed. She may replace her home laptop with an iPad. Then Anne mentioned that she had attended an engineering event where iPads WERE USED TO DRIVE ROBOTS! The iPad was held/used like a steering wheel... (but can I use an iPad to drive my car from the back seat?)

Katy told us: YES YOU CAN!!! Her father had been working on a project for John Deere where they were trying to design a way to use GPS to guide unmanned ROBOTIC TRACTORS. There may be a robotic lawnmower out there that you can control with your iPad too.

Anne mentioned that some of the engineers from John Deere that worked on that project had visited UW-Madison for additional training, and had used the library. Small world!

Ian reminded us of the laser powered mosquito killing tool...

Ian then introduced the LOL (learning objects life) that iDwog (ha ha ok IDWoG) was building. It will manage the campus libraries self-created learning objects. Cool! The Shared Development group is working on it now. You can submit objects and describe them with faceted tags. The submitter has some ability to manage rights/editing of the objects too. The end result should be far superior to MyWebSpace (hurray!)

Jim introduced Soluto: a tool that monitors what you run at start-up to help you pare down the number of extra applications running. This will speed up your start-up time! You can choose to “pause” applications to never run, or “delay” applications to start later. Jim then mentioned the Your Open Book site... which details everything on Facebook that everybody does not want everyone to know...

And Katy had the last word, reminding us of Lamebook (hah).

See you all next month!

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – May 27, 2010

2010-06-07T15:35:00.000-05:00

Late May is one of my favorite times of the year. The semester is over and the summer has not become too busy, yet... We were lucky to have a LILI IT meeting!

Karen started the discussion by introducing us to Etsy http://www.etsy.com/, a site that sells artists goods with an easy to use interface. Can the interface be used as a model for library tools? Can you use it to buy great gifts?

Tom reminded us of the interesting Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends tool. You can use this to search on the relative interest of different search terms that users have entered into Google. Terms should be separated with commas. Searches can be narrowed to region and time period. I REALLY wish that our library databases all had such a tool.

Nancy mentioned that sometimes when users have trouble with using the Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/schhp connection to RefWorks (or other tools like Zotero) it is not necessarily RefWorks fault when the data does not upload correctly. Sometimes the meta-data on the originating site is not structured correctly, and RefWorks can't do anything about that...!

Barbara began a discussion on the relative merits of the feed readers that are available. Everyone still seems to like Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com/, and Google Reader http://www.google.com/reader/ has supporters. The Thunderbird Reader add-on is useful too.

Jim brought our attention to Twitter http://twitter.com/ feed readers, such as Seesmic http://seesmic.com/, and TweetDeck http://www.tweetdeck.com/. Jim finds Seesmic in particular to be a useful way to aggregate many twitter feeds in one place. Cool! Nancy reminded us that Hootsuite http://hootsuite.com/ is a very good way to manage Twitter feed publishing. The libraries are already using this great tool!

Karen noted that she has been doing some research on product labeling, and suggested these very useful sites: Greener Choices EcoLabeling http://www.greenerchoices.org/eco-labels/, MotherJones EcoLabel Guide, and Green Washing.

[After the meeting, Karen sent me these additional links. Check them out. They are very interesting! Post: Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen, GoodGuide: http://www.goodguide.com/, Skin Deep - Cosmetics Safety Database: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/, Chemical Cuisine: http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm Food Labeling: http://www.cspinet.org/foodlabeling/ ]

Diana finished off the hour by introducing us to the very cool Powered Green http://www.poweredgreen.com/ site, started by two UW-Madison Students. By making a donation, you can "offset" your laptop energy use by supporting wind-farms and other green energy technologies.

See you all in July!

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – April 22, 2010

2010-04-30T15:30:00.001-05:00

In the far distance (Milwaukee) WAAL is getting revved-up... meanwhile, back in Madison the LILI IT Interest Group carries on... Today we looked at a number of interesting sites and news-worthy developments:

Nancy started us off by demonstrating a very useful tool called Readibility: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ This site provides a bookmarklet that can be used to strip out extraneous advertizing and banner content from pages that you visit. It works very well! (I am planning to use it right away.) Nancy also mentioned the New York Times technology columnist David Pogue: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/ His column is very informative, AND it benefits from being Readibilitized.

Nancy next moved us on to a demonstration of the http://www.mailboxmap.com/ tool. It is a map of mailboxes! (And post offices). It is fantastic! How many times I have wished something like this could be easily available. With a newer cell phone the world is at your fingertips...

Tom (now writing in the 3rd person) mentioned the new Facebook Like button that is capturing the news lately and causing a stir. Some see this as a bid to knock Google off of its "organizing the web" pedestal, some privacy advocates seem to be concerned, and some Facebook users are confused about what it all means... It strikes me (for now) as a tempest in a techpot. Sorry for the pun. But worth seeing where/if it develops further.

Nancy mentioned the Facebook "Share Bookmarklet." Cool! This tool lets you share pages and bookmarks that you like to your profile. You have to be logged-in to Facebook for it to work, but you no longer have to go back-and-forth between pages and your profile to add the suggested links. Yay!

Katie mentioned the http://www.stumbleupon.com/ tool. It has been a while since I looked at this. Why! As you all know, this useful services utilizes your ratings to build a preference profile for you. It works very similarly to a number of music rating services I have seen/used. The more you rate, the better website suggestions the service makes.

Sarah finished off our meeting by telling us all about the very, very cool project that College, Sarah/LILI, LTG, Lee, and Lisa have been working on with Professor Jon McKenzie. The Digital Salon includes: "Podcasts, experimental videos, graphic novels and essays, websites, blogs, multimedia installations, and posters..." They will be presented online and at College. It is this kind of project that draws people to creative and thoughtful activity on the web.

"The heart of the Digital Salon is a one-week exhibition of new media work by UW graduate and undergraduate students, to be held in College Library's Open Book Café from April 25-30." In addition "A one-day symposium will bring together UW-Madison faculty and staff to present and discuss their digital arts and humanities research, teaching activities, and support services, as well as the larger implications of new media for cultural research and artistic production. The symposium will be held in Memorial Library on Friday, April 30th."

The student work will be presented in a new online space. Very exciting!

See you all next month!

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – March 25, 2010

2010-03-25T20:26:00.004-05:00

A short meeting today because of the upcoming LS Forum (which was very interesting) but we still packed a lot into LILI IT!

Jim demonstrated the way that he has been using the POP option in Gmail to read his Wiscmail via Gmail. One of the major benefits that Jim looks forward to is to use his (soon to come) Google Nexus One phone to use his Gmail to check his Wiscmail. That is pretty cool. Jim mentioned that though the email interface is great, there is no easily accessible "get mail" button to run the POP. Soon probably...

Next, Jim showed us a very cool web-based image editing application called Aviary: http://aviary.com/ There are downloadable add-ons for Chrome and Firefox. It looks intuitive and fast. Honestly, I can't remember the huge number of times that I wish I had access to a good web-based imaging application that can compete with Photoshop. Based on a first-look, it looks like Aviary can compete favorably.

Bob let us know about these very useful tools for blocking and dealing with malware, the bane of everyone's existence these days. As Bob noted, malware can lurk in advertisements syndicated to even very popular and legitimate sites, as this CNET article explains.

NoScript https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722
Flashblock https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433
Adblock Plus https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

Bob notes that though these work, they can also work too well. For example, No Script can and does block JavaScript from running, but many legitimate sites use JS in non-evil ways. So, use these tools wisely.

If you read the blog posts below, you will see a post where I promise to add some of the discussion from the LILI IT Ref-Retreat Lunch Table. Well, this is the LILI IT Group, so, using our time machine to return to the Reference Retreat in January... Jim reminded us (me, really) of the password management application that he demoed at the Reference Retreat lunch table: Last Pass http://lastpass.com/ It works great, and is a very efficient way to deal with ballooning password management.

Tom mentioned the suite of tools from the ZOHO site. http://www.zoho.com/ I like the note-taking application called ZOHO Notebook in particular.

OK, back in the time machine... and now we are back in March... ahhh, March.

Bob lamented that we were not all at SXSW. Truer words were never spoken. Maybe next year we can all do a roadtrip.

Ian mentioned that John Martin has been putting together a Friday Game Design meeting in the GLS offices of Ed-Sci (room 138). Apparently campus librarians have been attending in force. Of course! The purpose is to test game designs and is not restricted to digital games. One of the very fun-sounding activities that they did included designing games from random objects. Read all about it on the ComETS Game Sig page.

Ian also let us know that the notes and materials from the EDUCAUSE Mobile Learning 2.0 meeting were still online for our viewing/reading. I was lucky to be able to attend part of the event. A big thank you to Sarah for making sure this happened locally. Like she is not busy enough already!

Jim showed the interesting site, Fuelly: http://www.fuelly.com/ It shows average mileage for many vehicles. Very useful!

Jim and Ian moved us on to talking about 4Square: http://foursquare.com/ An augmented reality phone app. What does it do? Users share geolocated information to "learn about favorite spots and new places." Ian was Mayor of College for a while. He has since retired. Life is tough at the top.

Katy (DING! New member!) noted the similarity to Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/ and also how they had gotten in trouble lately for extortion...

That is it for today. We packed all that into 45 minutes!

Next LILI IT Meeting at MERIT

2010-03-17T17:31:00.000-05:00

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 25th at 12-1pm.

Jim Jonas suggested moving the meeting to MERIT Library room 348. It think it sounds like a great idea!

(This is so that people can get to the Library Services Forum that starts at 1:00pm, located in room 204 Educational Sciences Building.)

See you all at MERIT on Thusday, March 25th at 12 noon!

LILI IT Meeting Location Change - ComETS birthday party!

2010-02-17T16:46:00.003-06:00

Hi LILI IT! Come to the ComETS birthday party, scheduled for Thursday, February 25, at 11:30am-1:30pm - in the Red Gym.

From the website: http://comets.wisc.edu/event/comets-birthday-party-membership-meeting
"Lunch and birthday cake will be provided (thanks to CIO Ron Kraemer and DoIT-Academic Technology). Please come to help us celebrate, and to engage in conversation about what ComETS is doing and to share your ideas for the future."

12:30 - 1:00 Choose a breakout table to discuss visions for the following topics at UW-Madison: • Assessment • The ComETS community • Games • Learning Management Systems / Personal Learning Environments • Media Production • Mobiles • Supporting Outreach and Public Service

Reference Retreat Table Discussion

2010-01-12T19:11:00.002-06:00

We had a great Reference Retreat lunch table discussion today. I am hoping we can cover some of the tools we saw today again at the next meeting. Then we can add them to the blog!

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – October 22, 2009

2009-10-22T22:00:00.005-05:00

We met in October despite WLA conflicts and poor weather!

Bob: got us off and running with a very interesting demo of Google Sketchup. He showed us a file his daughter (an architect) had created to design an end-table. A nice design! One can design objects, add textures, obtain precise measurements of the objects, and make objects transparent for easier observation. Bob showed us that it is possible to import an image of a floorplan, then scale that image to the correct proportions, and then finally draw the walls/doors to exact scale. That is amazing! Bob finds that the "Missing Manual" for Google Sketchup by Chris Grover is a good book to use to learn this tool: http://www.amazon.com/Google-SketchUp-Missing-Chris-Grover

Jim: showed us a variety of great sources of information for staying ahead of technology change and development. The first site we visited was TWiT: http://twit.tv/ (This Week in Tech) - This site includes a series of podcasts (as well as other sources of information) focused on specific topics. Jim notes that the Leo Laporte "tech guy" podcast is very good. He also listens to "Windows Weekly" and the Macbreak Weekly podcast looks good too. From there Jim brought us to http://www.techcrunch.com/ to take a look at their site, also chock full of interesting information. in particular, Jim pointed out the TechCrunch50 Conference that they sponsor every year: http://www.techcrunch50.com/2009/companies/ At this event, top startups present their new ideas, and compete for fabulous prizes... Finally, Jim noted this very promising-looking financial application called Mint: http://www.mint.com/ It helps you manage your personal finances.

Karen: finished up the hour by showing us the NatureBreak site: http://www.naturebreak.org/NatureBreak/Nature_Break.html This site has been created by noted wildlife documentary creator Vanessa Serrao to "bring together people who love nature." There are a variety of nature themed videos to watch, including a few that are "viral" on YouTube. I will let you all ask Karen why that is... :-0

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – September 24, 2009

2009-10-14T13:27:00.004-05:00

Here we are back for a new semester. At the September meeting we looked at and discussed several very interesting tools/technologies:

1) Jim: started off the meeting by showing us the free Prezi presentation tool: http://prezi.com/ It is really very cool! This presentation tool can replace PowerPoint, but functions in a way that is significantly different. Instead of moving sequentially through a series of slides, Prezi presentations are created as one large "screen" that can be rotated and focused in on at varying levels of magnification as a way of bundling packets of presentation information. If that makes no sense, go to the site and watch the demo. The Prezi site also include tutorials. The entire package is slick, and artistically mesmerizing. Jim notes that the presentations can live on their servers, or you can also download the file.

2) Entire group: discussed smart boards in libraries. Jim notes that the MERIT library recently purchased two smart boards, and they look like they have a variety of potential uses in library instruction. Depending on the brand/type of SB, they function differently. Some require an external device (ie. stylus) to interact with the board, and others just use the touch of a hand. Jody (welcome!) notes that in the K-12 school environment they are in use already. She notes that some come equipped with built in keyboards. Jill and Bob both mentioned that they had seen museum displays (example: Art Institute - American wing) that used these tools. They can run/display the standard computer applications too. The group noted that this looks like a promising item that libraries could experiment with in public spaces.

3) Bob mentioned a very handy desktop set-up that he had been working with. This includes two monitors with a single PC. He has also been experimenting with Windows 7 since June, and he likes it. Phil mentioned that it is possible (it looks like for students) to get the Windows7 home version for $30 if you use a university email address. Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/5361767/students-get-windows-7-for-30 Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5361566/get-windows-7-home-premium-for-30-with-a-college-email-address

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – August 27, 2009

2009-08-29T16:38:00.002-05:00

Hi Everyone!
This week we had a very "short" meeting. But, we still looked a a few interesting items:

1) Nancy mentioned that the UW-Madison Center for Visual Culture is moving into Memorial Library. They have an intersting web site: http://www.visualculture.wisc.edu/

2) Ian told us about the College Library "Helen C. House Party" on September 10th: there will be lots to do (and eat): http://www.college.library.wisc.edu/party/ Ian is working on the “Bibliodefenders” game (that will be played at the party) with some of the ARIS people: https://wiki.doit.wisc.edu/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=19300366

3) Nancy showed us the Mover iPhone app. It lets you move files from one iPhone to another very easily: http://infinite-labs.net/mover/ Cool!

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – July 23, 2009

2009-07-24T19:09:00.003-05:00

Once again, amazing tools identified by the LILI-IT group members!

Ian kicked off the July meeting by showing an Amazing (with a capital A) video if an iPhone app that helps you to navigate the NYC subway system. Ian notes (and I agree) that something like this could be used to navigate a library or the library system. Very cool: New York Nearest Subway Augmented Reality App for iPhone 3GS from acrossair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH6r2tIaRXU

Phil introduced us to the absolutely cutting edge Google Wave tool, yet to be released. It integrates IM tech into a sort of “conversation management” tool. Also it translates various languages (using the Rosy Robot – see below) in real time as you type! It is not out yet, but you can apply to be a tester.

Here are some notes about it that Phil sent to me via email:

The official Google Wave site: http://wave.google.com/

Highlight Reel: http://lifehacker.com/5285944/the-google-wave-highlight-reel (most of the videos I showed were from this page)

Rosy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOHwPgMXsNY (the Rosy robot feature wasn't on the lifehacker page, for some reason)

Google Wave Abridged Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itc4253kjhw (This is a chopped-down version of the official hour and twenty minute presentation - the first two video pages are all just reworked footage from this)

Karen showed us Locavore, a really useful iPhone app for identifying local produce. It tells you where to go, and what is in season! http://enjoymentland.com/locavore/
The Locavore site lists these functions:

Automatically detects which state you’re in (currently only covers the US)
Food that’s in season near you
Food that’s coming in season near you soon
Farmers’ markets near you
Browse all 234 fruits and vegetables to see where it is currently growing
Links to Wikipedia articles and Epicurious recipes from each food detail page
Browse all 50 states to see what’s in season in other parts of the US

Karen also mentioned the social cataloging presentation from earlier this summer, and that she had been trying out Shelfari: http://www.shelfari.com/ Karen said that someone from Turkey had contacted her regarding her excellent taste in reading choices. International Social Networking is Real!

Anne described the explosion of Twitter (http://twitter.com/) use on campus: UWDCC tweets about newly scanned images, then these are read by UW-Athletics, and then they tweet about their upcoming events. The images and athletics tweets are then read and tweeted on by UW-Communications... cool! as the twitter site says "you can stay hyper–connected." Yes, you can.

See you all in August!

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – June 25, 2009

2009-07-24T19:08:00.000-05:00

Notes to be added soon!

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – May 28, 2009

2009-05-29T18:47:00.008-05:00

This month the meeting was held at the MERIT (CIMC) Library in room 348. We had a good sized group for the meeting, and we discussed a series of very interesting topics! A very big thank you to Jim for scheduling the room at MERIT!

Jim: started us off by showing us the Windows 7 Release Candidate (Win7RC)(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx ) Based on Jim’s research, it looks like the present Win7RC will be very similar to the commercial version to be released this year. Jim notes that originally it was to be released for purchase in July, but now the date has been likely pushed back to November/December. The Win7RC can be downloaded fairly easily (2 gigs) and you can use it for free until next Spring 2010 (March/April). Jim/group was not sure of the installation size of Vista versus the Win7RC. Jim and group note that the look/use of the Win7RC is fairly similar to Vista, but Jim notes that it is very stable (no crashes so far) and it seems to be less of a memory hog. Features: The bottom “task bar” common to Win95-XP has been replaced by the application start icons similar to Vista (and Mac). These icons can link you to the multiple windows that you may have open in each application, and offer a “jump list” to recently opened/modified documents. You can now create your own tool bar in the system tray area, and there is a button to quickly access your media libraries. The backend tools from previous versions of Windows, such as the “Control Panel/Settings,” “Windows Updater,” and “Windows Explorer” still exist though they are differently organized and look different. The look/functionality of these tools is similar again to Vista. Problems: Emily noted that Vista caused conflicts with Endnote because of the “User Account Control” feature that prompts you for the “Administrator Login” (to give applications permission to function). Jim notes that this security feature still exists in Win7RC, and so it is important to retain knowledge of the “Administrator Login.”

Jim: noted that Google Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome ) has a new feature that allows you to convert a website into a desktop run application. You access it from a button in the top right of Chrome: “create application shortcuts.” In this way you can “run” the application to view a website without using the normal browser. The application periodically updates itself with new site content.

Emily: noted that her nephew is a big fan of an online game based on the years surrounding WWI (Perhaps: http://www.supremacy1914.com/). But, he was not aware of Second Life. Congratulations LILI IT Interest!

Bob: discussed the mind-mapping tool FreeMind
( http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page ). This tool produces very clear thought-maps/topic-maps for a topic that you are exploring. There are a variety of different node-types that you can use to add text and organization. Steenbock Library tried this out for mapping their definition of “Circulation Services.” Bob noted that it is available to download/work on Win-XP, Mac OSX, and Linnux. The group discussed the various ways that it might be useful in library instruction. Emily suggested that it could be used during a class to map out a research topic. Bob noted that it would probably require two people to use it in a classroom setting. The group discussed uses such as saving and sharing the topics maps with students, or posting the output to a website. We all saw lots of potential for this tool.

Phil: brought in one of the 12 new laptops that LTG had purchased. These are Samsung N120 Netbooks. ( http://tinyurl.com/SamN120 )(http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/detail/detail.do?group=computersperipherals&type=mobilecomputing&subtype=mininotebook&model_cd=NP-N120-KA01US ) These are listed at about $440 on the Samsung site. They have an amazing 7 hour long battery life, and they are very light. They are tiny, but Phil and others noted that the keyboard is still typeable as the key placement is standard. Nancy noted that this make/model was chosen by LTG because it includes a standard LCD projector output, whereas other comparable Netbooks do not. They have the standard office applications, and Phil noted that they can accept additional installed software, as LTG is reimaging them after use. Phil noted that these are very similar to the “One Laptop Per Child” units. Bob brought in a copy of Puppy Linux ( http://www.puppylinux.org/) on a USB “flash” drive, and he and Phil were able to run it from the USB socket on the N120. Bob notes that PL can run Thunderbird, Firefox, and Open-Office. Group: noted that in addition to Puppy Linux, other similar OS can be successfully run from the USB, such as the GNU/Linux Ubunto OS (http://www.ubuntu.com/ ) , and the Linux Sugar on a Stick OS ( http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick ).

Nancy: noted that the iPhone has an unbelievable “Ocarina Flute” app! So Cool! (http://ocarina.smule.com/ )

Ian: is planning (along with the LILI Instructional Design Working group and the Library Website Management team) to use the 2D barcodes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode ) he demonstrated at the March LILI IT meeting as a promotional device for use during SOAR. [Yes! The LILI IT Group breaks the news before it is news! See March 26th for videos and more links! Go Ian, go Ian (raise the roof) woop woop!] The barcodes will be placed on the doors of libraries as well as some printed promotional materials. Ian notes that they can be generated for free on-line (this tool does QR Codes http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ ), but there are many other generators too. Tom suggested looking into generating the barcodes using fonts for Microsoft Word. Ian noted that, for students to interact with the barcodes they will need an iPhone, Nokia phone, or a Blackberry. The device will need to have the “NeoReader” app installed. (http://www.neoreader.com/ ) Why is there interest in this? Ian explained that though SOAR is a good place for the libraries to meet students and parents, there is no SOAR libraries tour. The 2D codes on the library door can direct users to the correct library mobile site. Actually, Ian notes that they are useful anyplace that you would like to bridge the gap between physical spaces and the web. This creates a “hypertext link to the real world.” [Ian, don’t get caught in the Matrix!] Nancy used her iPhone and tried an example that Ian created on the fly, and it worked great!

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – March 26, 2009

2009-03-27T21:59:00.003-05:00

We had a small group this time, but we ended up looking at some very interesting tools. Just before the meeting started Lee stopped by on his way to another meeting and made a few suggestions too... we ended up looking at a variety of project management and personal planning tools, as well as QRCodes, and some data. Interesting!

Annie: showed us Highrise, by 37Signals: http://www.highrisehq.com/
This tool is being used by Wendt for coordinating contacts for reserves as well as liaisons, so that information about the contacts is managed better, specifically the continuity of contacts over time. For example, it should be possible to record a patrons (esp. professor’s) preferences regarding certain services such as instruction or reserves.
Watch the Video: http://www.highrisehq.com/#videos/guided_tour

Lee and Annie: mentioned/showed Basecamp, also by 37Signals: http://www.basecamphq.com/
This is a project management tool, that allows you to track projects, documentation, and assigned staff during the project duration. Wendt has been using it for tracking IT projects such as programming needs or upgrades.

Lee and Annie: mentioned/showed Backpack, also by 37Signals: This tool helps with personal to-do lists, calendaring, and some file management.
Watch the video: http://www.backpackit.com/demos/create_page/

Lee: mentioned Liquid Planner before the meeting, and we took a look at it! http://www.liquidplanner.com/
This is another project management tool that facilitates management of staff time allocation to multiple simultaneous projects, and the tracking of costs.
They also have a video: http://www.liquidplanner.com/#

Ian: broke us out of the efficiency-application mold, and led us on an adventure into the realm of cutting edge barcode-to-mobile-device technology. QRCodes can be generated from free sites such as http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ and then physically posted in paper documents or on physical objects. The QR code can be “photographed” with a mobile device and then read with an application on the mobile device, which converts the QRCode into a text message or URL, which can then be visited using the phone/device. Ian expects the process to improve and become common in the next few years. He notes that it is already very popular as a promotional tool in some other countries like Japan. Ian could see this being used for SOAR. So can I.
Watch a video of this working: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNVZV9-z5vE
Here is a short article about how this can be used for promotional purposes.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_market_iphone_apps_via_barcodes.php

Group discussion about Camtasia and Captivate, and the drawbacks of Captivate with regards to file management and lengthy updates to guides.
Camtasia: http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
Captivate: http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/

Annie: Showed us the Google Sites tool that Wendt is using for building a staff intranet: http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html Annie notes that it is good for building staff web pages (procedural guides, staff information), but the document management functionality is not great. Instead she suggests using Google Sites with Google Docs. Together these cooperate to form a robust intranet experience.

Ian: Mentioned that College was looking at Confluence as a possible internal content management system, and that DoIT had also been experimenting with it. http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ Unfortunately, DoIT has been taking a long time to fully implement a robust wiki tool, though it may happen soon.

Tom: finished up the hour by passing around copies of the EDUCAUSE documents related to Judith Caruso’s recent campus discussion of her work on the 2008 ECAR “Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology.” Jean Ruenger-Hanson had mentioned these via email earlier on the LILI IT list.
ECAR Key Findings: http://www.educause.edu/KeyFindings/1165
ECAR Research Studies: http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/ResearchPublications/ResearchStudies/1010
ECAR Roadmaps: http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/ResearchPublications/Roadmaps/1773

Tom also mentioned the similar DoIT Surveys. DoIT Research Reports on Campus IT Usage: http://www.doit.wisc.edu/about/research/

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – February 26, 2009

2009-02-27T13:03:00.008-06:00

The weather yesterday was rainy and cold, but for the LILI IT Interest Group, the show must go on:

Bob: Mentioned a very interesting article in the NYT about Google, by David Pogue: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/technology/personaltech/26pogue.html?_r=1 Pogue covers many of the important things Google is doing these days. [Tom note: also check out his blog: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/ ]

Group: Discussion of WorldCat [first search] vs. http://www.worldcat.org/ Nancy notes that it is important to make sure that patrons know about the duplicate record issue that has plagued OCLC for some time, and also that the link to journals is obscured in the left hand navigation. The .org interface is otherwise nice and Ian notes that interface design is critical to keep users coming back.

Nancy: Demo of the voice recognition function on her iPhone that ties into a google search. A click on the search results dials the phone. Pretty cool!

Anne: drew our attention to the recent political tangle Twitter ( http://twitter.com/ ) has been drawn into due to certain politicians using Twitter to comment on Obama's recent speech.

Karen: Mentioned that http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/ continues to develop. It is an interesting TOC review tool. Nancy mentions that Ulrichs also is a very good source for recent TOCs. [Tom note: I had not seen this in Ulrichs, and it looks useful. Yet another reason to remember Ulrichs.]

Karen: showed two humorous short videos from library contests. These are hosted on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/: the UMD Library Student Contest: Book Staxx; the National Library Week: Reference Desk.

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – January 22, 2009

2009-01-26T09:54:00.002-06:00

After a hiatus of a couple of months, the LILI IT Interest Group is back!

Bob: 1) he notes how convenient it can be to have 2 monitors per computer. The Reference desk at Steenbock has 2 monitors now, and other computers there may get two monitors soon. 2) He notes the unbelievable convenience of a very slick free application Portable Apps http://portableapps.com/ that allows you to use the Microsoft Office applications and Open Office from a flash USB drive. 3) He notes the convenience of Google Notebook: http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlenotebook/tour1.html which he uses to share information with colleagues.

Ian: presented a demo of the ARIS Games tool: http://arisgames.org/ This tool allows you to build a geospatial game, such as geo-cache games, and scavenger hunts. The tool was built with an Engage grant and can work on mobile devices. Ian is planning on experimenting with it and wants to build a sample game for the libraries.

Karen: presented 1) an interesting tool Who’s Talkin that aggregates twitter and blog postings (from “60 of the internet’s most popular social media gateways”) into a single search engine. We tried it and it works! We searched on Steenbock Library and found a variety of postings. http://whostalkin.com/ 2) The Web Watch Transit Master online application that tracks the Madison Metro busses. http://webwatch.cityofmadison.com/webwatch/ No more waiting for a bus that will never come! 3) The TicTocs http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/ web tool that allows you to view TOCs from a variety of journal publishers. The site also provides some searching too, which makes it an interesting metasearch tool also!

Jim: presented several tools: 1) Songbird is a tool that allows you to organize your personal music collection (and play the songs too!). http://www.getsongbird.com/ 2) Open Office Extensions (OpenOffice.org, is a free cross-platform office application suite, intended as a competitor to Microsoft Office.) http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/ these tools allow you to add functionality into the OpenOffice tools, such as language dictionaries. Jim notes that there is a tool that allows you to export and import your documents to and from Google Docs, Zoho and WebDAV servers ( 2GoogleDocs http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd ).

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes - October 23, 2008

2008-11-07T20:08:00.004-06:00

Part One: While Nancy answered virtual reference questions at the meeting (!) we had a group discussion about virtual reference...

It was noted that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of virtual reference calls. Compared to this time last year, there have been 600 more calls in October 2008.
The Velaro license is locked down, meaning we have 5 operators max. Two are at Memorial, two are at College, and one is in LTG.
8-5:00 is covered by Memorial and 5-midnight is covered by College everyday!
The weekends are covered by SLIS students.
College needs more practicum students to keep up with the calls.
Wendt has no central chat application, but Steenbock has created their own.
The Ask A Librarian site is the central place where callers log-in, so statistics can be gathered from that page.

Part Two: Ian let us know some additional information about Jing...

Ian uses Jing regularly for chat and has been creating little movies for staff with Jing that he emails out (Ian sent them to the LILI IT list too, thanks Ian!)
College has an online archive of the Jing clips that they have created.
Jing works great and is easy to use. Try it out: http://www.jingproject.com/

Part three: discussion of online news resources...

Ian explained Gaudi: http://labs.google.com/gaudi
Google is using Gaudi to index the contents Youtube videos!
Emily wondered if the School of Communication would be interested in this tool. She noted that DATN had been using the closed captioning to index the content of those videos.
Emily also wondered if Political science would be interested.
It was noted by ... someone (sorry!)... that Hulu has a news service: http://www.hulu.com/
Tom noted that Google News is sort of neat: http://news.google.com/nwshp
Nancy and Emily noted that Ron Larson used to do News Librarianship. ( Here is a blog post about Ron and News Librarianship that I found: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/list-of-longer-pages/recruiting-the-next-generation-of-news-librarians/ )
Ian noted that the tool “FundRace” http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/ allows you to track political donations.

Part Four: random interesting observations...

Sarah mentioned that you can use your cellphone as a portable modem!
Ian noted the Cuil search, with a very large index: http://www.cuil.com/
Emily and Sarah noted that Google has an iPhone competitor now, the T-Mobile G1: http://www.t-mobileg1.com/

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes - September 25, 2008

2008-09-29T16:59:00.003-05:00

For the September meeting, the IT Group chose a theme: Mobile Devices

iPhone = Nancy and Dave, Blackberry = Anne, iTouch = Sheila, secret admirers = Jim, Emily, and Tom

Dave – Demoed the way to connect to either the satellite or the Memorial wireless network on an iPhone. Also explained that one could publish a WiscCal schedule to a “share” which can be viewed in the iPhone also.

Nancy – She uses the share link from WiscCal to publish her schedule in google calendar, which can also be viewed with the iPhone.

Anne – Uses her Blackberry to collect/view the feeds off of the Wendt site, which also includes some scheduling information. She also uses the WiscCal share.

Sheila – Mentioned the Apps Store on the iPhone, which she used to obtain ITunes as well as sports scores. Sheila noted that some university classes have iPhone apps for the class, where students can download flashcards/notes and other helpful tools.

Nancy – Explained the Apps Store further, mentioning that there are many apps available. Some for free and some for a cheap price ($1). These include things like movie previews/reviews/showtimes, golf tips, book reviews, etc. There are book readers too, such as “Stanza.”

Phyllis – Mentioned that there is a potentially useful app called “scribble” which one could use to draw pictures or write notes, and then send them to a student (or vice versa).

Nancy/Dave – Mentioned that the music service “Pandora” (http://www.pandora.com/) is helpful, and that you can access this via your iPhone also. The service detects your preferences based on your choices and revises the play list continuously. Nancy mentioned that there is a related app called “Shazam” (http://www.shazam.com/music/web/home.html) where you can use your iPhone to record a short sample of music and the iPhone with Shazam on will identify the song, artist, and album.

Phyllis – Noted that the review service “Urban spoon” (http://www.urbanspoon.com/) can be used to view restaurant ratings, but that there do not seem to be any for Madison just yet. Anne and Sheila noted that these reviews are contributed by the public. Phyllis also took a look at LTG’s test version “Mobile LWS” (http://mobile.library.wisc.edu/).

General Discussion of iPhone/Mobile Devices - Phyllis noted that at first she was skeptical of the iPhone but is now a convert. Dave agrees, it is like a mini computer that you can carry around, and can be very handy. He notes that it is really no competition to the standard InfoLabs or Tier 1s though, as the use of the iPhone is limited in that you can’t really do a lot of typing. Sheila noted that when LILI had asked students what they used their iPhones for, they replied that they use them for: 1) looking at stack guides, 2) looking at library hours, and 3) doing quick/basic searches (such as for the call number of a specific book as they walk to the library). Anne added that students seemed to use them to look for where their reserves were.

ROOM CHANGE MEM 126: IT Interest Meeting

2008-09-24T09:04:00.001-05:00

The suggestion was made that we use Memorial 126 for tomorrow's LILI IT Interest Group meeting, because of the document camera available in that room. This will make it easier to show portable devices.

So: PLEASE NOTE THAT THE MEETING WILL NOW BE IN MEMORIAL 126. Thursday (tomorrow) at 12-1PM

Please come, AND bring your mobile devices! Also, if someone knows how to operate the document camera, that would be helpful. Thanks! Tom

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – August 28, 2008

2008-09-19T21:51:00.000-05:00

Nancy – Reports that Steve Meyer is tracking the discussions surrounding mobile phone use of the library web site and MadCat. He is looking into how people use mobile phones and what questions they ask about the site with respect to their mobile devices. The questions that the public asks should be entered into PSStats with the word “mobile.” There may be a future Public Services program on the mobile devices also. [Thanks Nancy, I think this is a fascinating issue. It really makes you wonder what is just around the corner - Tom.]

Emily – She is looking for information regarding how people have embedded blogs into their web sites. She emailed the LWS team but it seems that there is no standard way to do this right now. She noted that Karen Dunn added blog content to the center of the Steenbock web site, and Nikki Busch has a blog that links off of her grants page. She also wonders how much time should b spent on updating/blogging, and if using a commercial product on a GLS page is a good idea. Is it possible to keep it going? [Tom adding comments in retrospect: We started using Blogger for the LILI IT meeting notes, basically because it is free and easy to use. So far no problems technically. Keeping it up to date is a task. Notice how these notes were delayed by 2 weeks...]

Bob – Notes that large size display monitors are cropping up everywhere. This speaks to their value and usefulness, though the content does absolutely need to be kept fresh. Steenbock has been using PowerPoint to create the display content, and it is later converted to Flash/HTML. The Steenbock screens display the events in rooms, hours, announcements, and weather. A WiscCal “share” for the study rooms automates some of the content. A committee decides on the content and the workload is distributed. The work is perhaps a few hours a week maximum. Bob also noted that Dave Luke may look into creating a way to database drive these screens to further automate the process. Also, this could be used as a fast way to announce news across campus quickly. Bob may be able to demo the Steenbock screen and creation process for us at a future LILI IT meeting. The others attending meeting thought that sounded interesting, and noted the ways that the big screens are used in computer labs, study rooms, and some departments/buildings. [These screens are very handy, and... finally, a good use for PowerPoint - Tom].

Nancy/Emily – Notes from the technology update: LTG is looking for ways to improve efficiency, and is also concerned about creating ways to build intuitional knowledge/long term tech support. Peter described the “SDR” depository for the Google Books project, which has been named the “Hathi Trust” and will be shared by the CIC schools. http://www.hathitrust.org/

Chrome Browser

2008-09-19T20:13:00.003-05:00

Google's new browser Chrome has been the topic of many discussions:

http://www.google.com/chrome

As Ian, and several others noted, one focus of the discussions was their TOS, which wasn't so good... but, to Google's credit they changed it very quickly. (I also credit the swiftness of the bloggers etc. for bringing the problem to light).

360 Desktop

2008-07-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

This interesing discovery, from Ian!

"If you want the extra space provided by multiple monitors, but there just isn't enough room on your computer desk or money in your budget, check out this application."

http://www.360desktop.com/

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting – June 26, 2008

2008-06-26T18:15:00.003-05:00

1) TinEye - http://tineye.com/login
Ian Benton demonstrated this tool that can be used to search for images that are identical, derived from, or similar to a given image. The search universe is several hundred million images, and is expected to grow considerably.

2) Universal Digital Library http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.web/FindMLNativeByID?repl1=UWI27188
Jill Rosenshield showed this collection of digitized texts. If you click on the link “progress report” you can see a summary of the topics and languages included. It has a particularly strong collection of Chinese texts.

3) Doodle - http://www.doodle.de/main.html
Nancy McClements demonstrated this useful scheduling tool open to everyone, not just WiscCal users. (Useful for planning meetings with colleagues off campus.) Users of this scheduling tool can be sent a link and added or removed from the schedule very easily.

4) PicLens - http://www.piclens.com/
Kelli Keclik demonstrated this promising looking image search tool. It gives a user an interface similar to the iPhone. “PicLens transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for photos and videos across the web.”

5) CoolIris - http://cooliris.com/site/ie/
Kelli also mentioned this helpful related tool that allows you to preview a webpage without having to visit the site. It is “a free browser add-on that lets you preview links and rich media without clicking or leaving your current page, so you can browse the web faster than ever. Simply mouseover your link or our Cooliris icon, and a preview window instantly appears with your content.”

6) Wikis from DoIT – Ian Benton also mentioned that staff at College were investigating a new Wiki application that will be available from DoIT via MyWebSpace soon. It has no project name(that we know of) quite yet, but the possibilities for tying into MyWebSpace are very intriguing!

7) Jott - http://jott.com/
Jim Jonas demonstrated this tool that you can use in coordination with your cell phone to “convert your voice into emails, text messages, reminders, lists and appointments.” There are several different options, but here are two of the more mind boggling: you can set up a group list of email contacts, then call Jott to interact with the list by leaving a voice message which is automatically transcribed to text and then emailed to the list of email contacts. Furthermore, you can leave a voice message with Jott that can also be automatically transformed into a calendar appointment.

8) Retrievr - http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/
Jim also demonstrated this amazing image search tool that allows you to draw a picture, which the system will try to match up to a real photograph from Flickr.

9) Skitch - http://skitch.com/
Tom Durkin demonstrated this still-image capture and editing application, similar to Jing’s image editing capability.

10) FireShot - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648
Jim also mentioned this FireFox add on that “creates screenshots of web pages. This plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations”

We have a twin

2008-06-05T16:51:00.002-05:00

Catherine Stephens stumbled across this today:

Library Emerging Technologies Group
http://librariansmatter.com/blog/2007/03/29/library-emerging-technologies-group/

They say everybody has a twin. I guess ours is "down under."

40 years ago - the "Mother of all Demos" the first mouse, etc

2008-05-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

A little computer history for you:

A movie of Douglas Engelbart I found on Google Video, recorded in 1968. The demo of the first mouse, and text editing like cut/paste etc:
"Doug Engelbart: The Demo" also known as the "Mother of all Demos"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097&q=engelbart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
"The Mother of All Demos is a name given to Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968 demonstration at the Convention Center in San Francisco. At the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC), Engelbart, with the help of his geographically distributed team, demonstrated the workings of the NLS (which stood for oNLine System) to the 1,000 computer professionals in attendance. The project was the result of work done at SRI International's Augmentation Research Center. The demo featured the first computer mouse the public had ever seen, as well as introducing interactive text, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email and hypertext."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
"He is best known for inventing the computer mouse (in a joint effort with Bill English); as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs..."

Physics simulator "phun"

2008-05-30T21:35:00.000-05:00

I just ran across this application called "PHUN."
It is a 2D physics simulator created by a Swedish grad student named Emil Ernerfeldt. It is very interesting!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H5g9VS0ENM
http://phun.cs.umu.se/wiki
http://www.vrlab.umu.se/research/phun/

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting – April 24, 2008

2008-04-25T21:47:00.004-05:00

Emily Wixson and SLIS student Lexy Spry demonstrated the video they created for YouTube to teach search techniques to high school students.

http://www.youtube.com/user/emilyatchemlib
They used iMovie, the built in microphone in a laptop, and a digital video-camera checked out from the College CMC to build the video.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/
They found that the training offered at the CIMC in how to use iMovie was very good, and in particular Matt Jabaily was very helpful with choosing the correct frame rate and keyframe rate.
Emily and Lexy created a pre/post test which may or may not be used depending on further experimentation.
Suggestions from Mark Beatty: record audio as mono, and a low audio sampling rate to further reduce file size. The keyframe rate can be set manually and should be selected at the beginning of stretches of video where the image changes little for number of frames.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_frame
Emily, Lexy, and Mark all found that the older version of iMovie works better than the newest version.

Group discussion of Carl Berger’s presentations

http://www.carat.umich.edu/carat/presentations (choose “Wisconsin, The Millennial Instructor”)
Carl Berger presented a great deal of very interesting data, in particular information about the tech-learning preferences of “digital native students” and students in general, in comparison to faculty/”digital faculty.”
Mr. Berger posits the existence of “millennial faculty” who combine features of “digital faculty” and “digital native students.”
Our discussion was very interesting but too much to record...! see Carl Berger’s slides for more information.

Bob Sessions noted that he has been investigating Wink

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/
“Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software”
Bob mentioned that it is a good competitor to Camtasia
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

Mark mentioned that Photo Express is a good free photo editor

http://www.download.com/Ulead-Photo-Express/3000-2192_4-10063404.html

Tom briefly demoed Google SketchUp

http://sketchup.google.com/
This can be used to create realistic-looking 3D models of practically anything; though learning how to use it is not very easy.

Blogs vs. Wikis

2008-04-25T20:49:00.003-05:00

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting - March 27th, 2008

2008-03-28T15:50:00.001-05:00

Attending: Jim Jonas, Emily Wixson, Karen Dunn, Anne Rauh, Jon Jeffryes, Meridith Thompson, Ian Benton, Bob Sessions, and Tom Durkin.

Bob Sessions – brought in a number of very interesting gadgets to pass around.

1) SanDisk Sansa e200 Series MP3 Players, with 2GB Storage chiphttp://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1166)SanDisk_Sansa_e200_Series_MP3_Players.aspx

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3402959&CatId=2476

a. Storage chip
http://www.sandisk.com/Products/ProductInfo.aspx?ID=2354

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3402910&CatId=3610

2) Logitech 980409-0403 Headphones with noise canceling circuit
http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Logitech%20980409-0403%20Headphones:1993713125

3) Centon 1GB MP3 Player w/ Voice Recorder
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3491935&Sku=C10-1062

Emily Wixson and Karen Dunn – Ever since Emily and Karen gave a presentation top the Advanced Biology class at West High School, Emily has pondered how to engage high school students in library orientation sessions. In the Fall of 2007, Emily was working with a SLIS BI field placement student on collaborative writing with Endnote when she stumbled upon a Goggle Docs YouTube video. Thinking YouTube might be a good medium for high school, she decided to pilot a YouTube video on Boolean operators. Emily's spring 2008 SLIS BI field placement student (Lexy Spry) is creating a 1.5 minute video using equipment from the CIMC and iMovie. The project also included a pre-test and post-test to assess learning. She has arranged with Eliot Finkelstein at College to test the video with upcoming high school visits. Emily and Karen will use the video next fall at West High.
YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/
iMovie - http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/

Anne Rauh/Jon Jeffryes – mentioned the use of YouTube for preserving the videos taken at UW Madison’s Innovation Days in the College of Engineering.
http://studentservices.engr.wisc.edu/innovation/index.html

Ian Benton – Reports that College has been experimenting with the “Twiki” wiki application. This is a free open-source application without required add content. College is using it for creating student circulation training materials, and an accompanying knowledgebase. This wiki has been very useful so far, and includes the unique “TwikiWords” tagging/linking feature. Twiki also allows the administrator to grant different levels of editing rights to each user.
http://twiki.org/

Jim Jonas – The CIMC did a session on “stop paying for software.” A series of sites were referenced here one can get access to free and open source applications to download and use:
Open Source Software Alternative - http://www.osalt.com/
Open Source Windows - http://www.opensourcewindows.org/
Open Source Mac - http://www.opensourcemac.org/

Karen Dunn – This site (KillerStartups) is also great for finding new applications. These additional sites are where I go to find new information about IT developments:
KillerStartups - http://www.killerstartups.com/
Gary Price’s Blog: Resource Shelf - http://www.resourceshelf.com/
Gary Price’s DocuTicker - http://www.docuticker.com/

Jim Jonas – Don’t forget these very good sites for learning about new technology trends:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/
http://flickrvision.com/
http://twittervision.com/

Tom – Also, don’t forget: http://www.download.com/ for finding free software.

LILI IT meeting notes 2/27/2008

2008-03-03T14:29:00.002-06:00

1) The Educause "7 things" project (recommended by Emily W. via email)http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=7495
This project was started in 2005 as a way to inform people in higher education about "Web 2.0" and related technologies. The site offers administrative summaries of various topics, such as blogs and podcasting, as well as reviews of individual resources such as YouTube or Google Earth. It is a good place to start if you want to get a quick overview of what a tool is or is useful for.

2) The Engage E-learning Teaching Tools (Jon Jeffryes)http://engage.wisc.edu/software/index.html
We looked at the "ConceptTutor" sample resource on "Locating Icebergs with Satellite Images."http://engage.wisc.edu/software/ct/examples.html

And we also looked at the "eTEACH" tool that combines PowerPoint slides with video and quiz capability. The "Peanut Butter and Jelly" demo gives an idea for how this can be used. http://engage.wisc.edu/software/et/index.html

3) Wikis and Google Docs for Library work (Anne Rauh and Jon Jeffryes)
We finished up with a discussion of how Wisconsin Tech Search (WTS) and Wendt Library have been using wikis and Google Docs for their internal library work and collaboration.

WTS has been using the Zoho wiki and Google Docs for work on on technical report and copyright:
http://wiki.zoho.com/jsp/wikilogin.jsp
http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour1.html

Wendt Library has also been using a similar wiki to manage collaboration within the Engineering Professional Development EPD classes that Wendt Library has worked on with the EPD department (Com A and B instructors). Stickipad is the wiki application that Wendt has been using: http://stikipad.com/

The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday March 27th (noon-1:00PM). I have reserved Memorial room 362 for the meeting, but we can use other locations depending on what everyone prefers.

Educause "7 things" project

2008-02-22T16:14:00.001-06:00

This from Emily W.:

http://www.educause.edu/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutSeries/7495
OR
http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=7495

These are briefs about emerging learning technologies. Very useful for a quick overview. They are brief (2 pages) and follow a consistent format, including:
* What it is
* How it works
* Where it is going
* Why it matters to teaching and learning

LILI IT Interest Group 1/24/08 - Notes

2008-01-25T14:13:00.002-06:00

Pamela showed us the New College Library Website <http://www.college.library.wisc.edu/>. New stuff includes:
* Daily Polls
* Got rid of underlines for hyperlinks
* increased coverage of events (e.g. Finals Week 2007)
* Displays feed from "What's new in Madcat" - it is broken down by topic
* Links to social networing tools (Flickr, Facebook, Del.ico.us)
* Rotating research guides
* Experimenting with the FCKEditor <http://www.fckeditor.net/> which allows staff to edit pages without going into Dreamweaver)

Bob showed us his favorite spot for free online videos:
http://www14.alluc.org/alluc/

In keeping with Bob's online media theme, Jim pointed out that currently http://www.hulu.com/ is in private beta - if you go to the site you can sign up to be a "tester" for free - I have no idea how long this will last.

Jim demonstrated http://www.ning.com/ - it is a place to find/create your own social networks built around a specific subject (e.g. Classroom 2.0 <http://classroom20.ning.com/>)

Miro <http://www.getmiro.com/> - is a free open source media player/video collector - provides access to a growing amount of high quality independent video content - Think of it as a video version of Bloglines

Karen showed us John Larsen's blog - it talks about a lot of the same stuff we do in this group - http://otterguy.blogspot.com/

We are invitated to next LILI forum - 12/6

Bob: http://www.woot.com/ - features a new low-priced gadget every day - prices are always good.

LILI del.icio.us account

2007-12-04T18:49:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-04T18:46:00.000-06:00

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.

October meeting

2007-11-30T16:26:00.004-06:00

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.

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

2007-09-24T14:23:00.001-05:00

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!)

Info Lit Games from August 23rd Meeting

2007-08-27T09:22:00.001-05:00

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

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

Notes from the July 18th IT meeting

2007-08-24T10:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-08-24T09:15:00.001-05:00

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!