Archive for August 2009

Sarah Houghton-Jan, the Librarian in Black, has completely redesigned her blog which she’s migrated from Typepad to Wordpress. The design and features are fantastic as is the content so be sure to update your RSS feed and bookmarks!

Google has announced that it is making 1 million public domain books from Google Books available for free download in the EPUB format. “EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices”, so users will be able to view these books on their mobile devices. According to ReadWriteWeb, Google had previously made this massive EPUB collection available to partners Barnes & Noble and Sony, but never to users before last week’s announcement.

Andy Burkhardt at Information Tyrannosaur provides Four Reasons Libraries Should be on Social Media. He argues that libraries should take advantage of these new technologies with the following purposes in mind:

1. Communication
2. Respond to Positive/Negative Feedback
3. Marketing/Advertising
4. Understanding Users Better

Sam Dean at OStatic gathers up 8 Resources for the Mighty Drupal Content Management System. His list includes resources for getting started with Drupal, interviews with Drupal insiders and educational podcasts and videos.

Justin Hoenke, Teen Librarian at Cape May County Library, guest posts at Library Garden with 5 Reasons why you should be gaming in your Library. If you’re considering video game programs or circulating video game collections in your library, you will want to check out this article for Hoenke’s reasons:

1. Welcome to the 21st Century!
2. Gaming builds community.
3. You will see all sorts of new people in your library.
4. You couldn’t ask for an easier way to get teens interested in the library.
5. The initial cost may be high, but the return investment is priceless.

Glen Stansberry at Nettuts+ writes about the Top 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems. The author lists each CMS along with a discussion of its best and most “usable” features. Based on my own experience, I heartily agree with the first two list entries as I have found both WordPress and Drupal to be particularly user-friendly as well as powerful content management systems.

Jared Newman at PCWorld takes a look at the two hottest e-book readers on the market right now with Sony’s E-Reader vs. Kindle: 5 Reasons Amazon Should Worry. The article discusses five features that may make Sony’s E-Reader the device of choice for e-book fans including:

1. More Choice
2. Touch
3. It’s Cheaper
4. Open Format
5. Cool Features

via Matt Bolin

Marc Beja at The Chronicle of Higher Ed’s Wired Campus reports on a new social tagging initiative at Dartmouth College which challenges players to beat the clock as they add metadata to library images for free.

“Ms. Flanagan, a digital-humanities professor at Dartmouth College, is creating an Internet-based game in which users create descriptive tags for library images to improve searching through the library’s database. Although the program will be tested at the college’s library, Ms. Flanagan says the game will be open source and available for others to download and build upon.”

Josh Catone at Mashable puts together a Back to School guide to the Top 10 iPhone Apps for Students. Each list entry details cost, features, and a screenshot. Here are his top five recommendations:

1. BigWords
2. iStudiez Pro
3. Evernote
4. SimpleMind
5. Cram

Jason Fitzpatrick at Lifehacker creates a guide to the Five Best Video-Sharing Sites. The article details cost, upload limits, and features of each video community. Here are his top three recommendations:

• blip.tv
• YouTube
• Vimeo

A new project from the MIT Media Lab called Personas will create a data portrait of your online identity. You simply enter your name and it searches the Web for information and context and computes a visual representation of how the Internet sees you.

Lisa Hoover at OStatic puts together a list of open source applications and resources “for everything from note-taking to scheduling classes projects”. Here are a few of the applications listed in A Toolkit of Back to School Open Source Apps, be sure and check out the full post for the rest:

• Lyx
• Task Coach
• Luminotes

Last night Facebook announced the new ability to publish content from Facebook Pages to Twitter. Administrators of Facebook Pages will soon be able to share updates with their Twitter followers as well as links, photos, notes, or events.

via ReadWriteWeb

The New York Times Bits Blog discusses a 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education which concludes “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” The report looks at comparative studies of traditional vs. online learning from 1996-2008, mainly in higher education settings.

“The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.”

Meryl Evans at Web Worker Daily comes up with 62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business. From helping others with problems to hosting contests and highlighting conference events, these useful tips are great inspiration and are divided into the following categories:

• Share Expertise to Build Credibility
• Grow Your Network
• Marketing
• Do the Right (and Fun) Thing
• Finally, Some Tips for Absolute Beginners

They have also created similar lists for other social networks such as: 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business, 34 Ways to Use YouTube for Business and 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business.