LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – March 26, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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/