Archive for the ‘Library 2.0’ Category

Library Journal has just issued its annual list of Movers and Shakers for 2010. These are cutting-edge librarians who are making a difference in the field. Congratulations to everyone on this well-deserved honor.

Paul Pival at the Distant Librarian provides detailed instructions with annotated screenshots for Embedding chat widgets within EBSCO databases. If you’d like to place a MeeboMe or other chat widget right within an EBSCO database you’ll want to check this out. I think this is a great idea for supporting patrons at the point of need.

via LibrarianinBlack

Richard Brooks at the Times Online reports that the British Library will offer over 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from its collection as free downloads this spring.

“Owners of the Amazon Kindle, an ebook reader device, will be able to view well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.

The library’s ebook publishing project, funded by Microsoft, the computer giant, is the latest move in the mounting online battle over the future of books.”

Sarah Houghton-Jan at the LibrarianinBlack presents 13 Ways (and 147 Tools) to Help Your Library Save Money on Technology. Here are her top five ways, be sure and check out the full post for all of the great tool suggestions.

1. Free Software for Public & Staff Computers
2. Free Security Software Suite
3. Free Staff Scheduling Software
4. Free Team Meeting Tools
5. Free Tech Support Tools

Blake Carver at LIS News has published the annual list of new must-read LIS blogs. Check out this year’s list of 10 Librarian Blogs To Read in 2010 for professional inspiration. Here are the top five:

1. Academic Librarian
2. Awful Library Books
3. The Best Of PubLib
4. Disruptive Library Technology Jester
5. Everybody’s Libraries

The Scottish Library and Information Council along with CILIPS (the Chartered Insitute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland) have published A Guide to Using Web 2.0 in Libraries.

“Although Web2.0 services have been integrated within our organisation, feedback from our members within the Scottish library and information
community indicates that considerable barriers to widespread adoption remain. The greatest challenge seems to be access, as many organisations restrict or block the use of Web2.0 or social networking sites, denying staff the opportunity to experiment with these potentially powerful tools.

In response to demand from members, and in order to address this challenge, SLIC and CILIPS have created these guidelines to highlight the potential of social media within library services and to encourage organisations to reassess restrictive practices regarding access.”

They have also published a guide to Improving Libraries for Learners.

via Stephen’s Lighthouse

Karen Coombs writes for Library Journal about libraries using the open source Drupal content management system in Drupal Done Right. In her article Coombs covers the SOPAC extension, the eXtensible Catalog, and initiatives at McMaster and Simon Fraser universities.

“From Arizona State University to Connecticut’s Darien Library, institutions of all shapes, sizes, and types use Drupal to manage their library web sites. However, some librarians have looked to Drupal as more than a tool for creating web sites. Some have attempted to bring more library systems and content to Drupal as a way to integrate library content in a single place. Others have seen Drupal as a flexible framework that can be used to integrate with other systems or create interactive tools for users. These organizations are stretching the bounds of what is possible with this open source tool.”

Marshall Breeding’s new Library Technology Report takes a look at major library automation systems and what types of APIs and customizability they offer. Packed with case studies and customer responses, Opening up Library Systems through Web Services and SOA: Hype or Reality? provides an in-depth look at what’s being offered in today’s ILS market.

Today I presented a talk on Next-Generation Libraries at the Online Information Conference in London, England. Here’s a slidecast of my talk if you’d like to check it out.

Paul Burgess at nettuts provides an extremely detailed step-by-step tutorial for How to Create a Photo Gallery using the Flickr API. If you’ve been considering ways to set up a slick photo gallery for your library’s digital image collection you’ll want to give this a read. Each of these sections includes screenshots and code snippets.

• Step 1 - Get a Flickr API key
• Step 2 - Download phpFlickr
• Step 3 - Basic Setup and Simple Configuration
• Step 4 - Building the Thumbnails Page
• Step 5 - Build a Page to Display Single Photos

This week I have assigned students in my Open Movements course the task of self-archiving their final papers in either E-LIS or DList, both disciplinary repositories for the LIS field. So in the spirit of that assignment, I archived a recent article which I wrote for The CyberSkeptic’s Guide to Internet Research in May, 2009. It’s titled 6 Steps to Publishing a Scholarly Online Journal (for free!) and it details how to create your own open access scholarly journal online.

The Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog has a quick guide to Five Essential Apps for Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Page. Many of these apps would also be particularly useful for a library’s FB page as well. During my presentation at the Suffolk County Library Association yesterday, I suggested two of these five for library Facebook pages, I can’t wait to check out the other three.

1. The Static FBML App
2. Causes App
3. Involver Apps
4. Social RSS App
5. Links App

You may also want to check out the blog’s Five Most Common Mistakes Made by Nonprofit Admins on Facebook.

If you’re interested in text/SMS reference in libraries, please check out my latest Stacking the Tech column, Text Message Reference: Is It Effective?

“The biblioblogosphere is replete with posts announcing the launch of new SMS (text message) reference services at a steadily increasing number of academic libraries. The appeal of these services is more or less self-evident given the ubiquity of mobile devices on campus.

Journal articles and conference sessions are filled with discussions of products and platforms, as well as strategies to market the new programs including YouTube videos, home page links, and Facebook applications. However, so far little has been gathered about how effective this type of service really is and whether or not it’s something that patrons find useful.”

Marc Parry at The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the advances in library search interfaces in After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software.

“The problem is that traditional online library catalogs don’t tend to order search results by ranked relevance, and they can befuddle users with clunky interfaces. Bauer, a graduate student specializing in early American history, once had such a hard time finding materials that she titled a bibliography “Meager Fruits of an Ongoing Fight With Virgo.”"

Be sure to also check out the follow-up article, The Library-Catalog Wars: ‘Chronicle’ Readers Weigh In, which sums up reader comments on the article such as:

“Unfortunately, instead of teaching students how to conduct a precise search with few relevant results, faculty and librarians have found an easy way out — googlize everything.”

If you’re wondering how to add functionality such as IM chat widgets or other rendered HTML to your library’s Facebook Page, Andy Burkhardt, Emerging Technology Librarian at Chaplain College Library walks you through how to do it in this helpful 2-minute screencast.