The Biblio File

Yesterday members of the Fairfield library staff gave a second workshop to faculty on an overview of web 2.0 (what it is, how it’s different, etc) and an introduction to some basic 2.0 technologies and how they can use them in a class room. PDFs of our power points can be found here.

We were asked to do this second workshop based on the success of a similar workshop we gave for faculty back in January. The response both times was overwhelmingly positive. One professor said he left “with a feeling of intellectual excitement,” and we have been invited to ggive a similar presentation at a pedagogy conference here this summer. We didn’t cover anything really indepth, and nothing particularly cutting edge (we introduced the RSS feeds, Blogs, Del.icio.us, and Google Docs). However, these were new technologies for many in the audience. Because part of librarians’ jobs involves keeping up on the latest technologies and thinking about their implementations/potential/ramifications, we forget that many of our colleagues on campus (who do not have keeping up on technologies written into their job descriptions) might not be as “cutting edge” as we assume they are. I think this can certainly be said of our students. For instance, when I have informally polled first and second year students in my instruction classes, very few students have responded as knowing what RSS feeds are or using them, a technology that is almost ubiquitous now in the library world. I think that while it is important to explore the latest and greatest, say, adding tagging capabilities to the catalog, it is also beneficial to promote more established technologies. Often, students and faculty don’t utilize a technology because they a) aren’t aware of it b) don’t see how it could be useful. Having focused workshops on such technologies not only helps students and faculty make better use of library resources (eg, RSS alerts in databases) but raises the profile of the library and reinforces the role of libarians as “go to” people for technology/information needs.

The Kept Up Librarian is reporting that the University of Florida has a service providing free text messaging to students. While I remain unconvinced about the usefulness of text messenging when it comes to reference services as some have suggested, I do see how this could be useful for advertising purposes. If the library was, for instance, giving a workshop on RefWorks, a text could be sent to everyone on campus reminding them an hour or two beforehand.

Libsite is a 2.0 portal for library related sites. Submit and annotate library web sites, subscribe to RSS feeds, and more.

Librarystuff reports on a Wall Street Journal article that says blogging can help you get a new job.

 Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recruitment manager, says he spends one to two hours a week searching through blogs for new talent or additional information about the candidates he has interviewed. “Blogs are a tool in the tool kit,” he says. Since he joined the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant three years ago, Mr. Logen estimates that Web journals have helped him fill 125 corporate jobs. Most of the recruits were referred to him by bloggers and blog contributors, and some were the writers themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html?ref=obituaries

Apple announced that it has struck a deal with EMI to sell DRM free songs from it’s itunes store.  See analysis at Daring Fireball.

As reported by the Free Range Librarian, the Institute for the Future of the Book has announced the upcoming release of its Sophie software:

Sophie is an open-source platform for creating and reading electronic books for the networked environment. It will facilitate the construction of documents that use multimedia and time in ways that are currently difficult, if not impossible, with today’s software.

I haven’t yet waded through the 13 page PDF explaining all the ins and outs, but from an intial once over it looks pretty cool.

Fleck.com is a site that allows users to make notes (sticky style) on web pages and then send those annoations to someone else.  This could be useful for pushing pages to people on virtual reference or IM, or for any sort of collaborative work involving internet resources. Check out the example I did below.
http://extension.fleck.com/?sh=43859f5139a47be3b5267ca415b79facaf246438