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Meta
Author Archives: Stephen Francoeur
Posts: 178 (archived below)
Comments: 34
Using Google for Floor Maps and Interior Street Views
In the Tech Sharecase, we’ve talked a lot about using Google’s services to add floorplans to Google Maps and using their Street View function to offer a virtual interior to your building. Brian Herzog has a great post today on his blog, Swiss Army Librarian, writing up what the process was like for his public library in working with Google for those two kinds of mapping.
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Tagged Floorplans, Google Maps
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Tech Sharecase, 25 July 2013
MOOCs
We started off by talking about MOOCs a bit, using one Tech Sharecase attendee’s personal experience as the springboard for discussion. Mentioned in the conversation was Karen Schneider”s blog post at Free Range Librarian detailing her experience being a student in a MOOC course, “All the lonely MOOCers. Where do they all come from?”
Badges and Gamification
We talked a bit about the trend to add game-like elements to instruction and the use of badges as incentives, something that was the focus of several presentations at ALA Annual this summer (such as this one and that one).
Google Maps
With an Android phone connected to the projector, we were able to see how Google presents floorplans for buildings in the Google Maps app. We looked at the floor plans for the library at California State University-Monterey Bay (some details on this can be found here).
We took at a look also at how the Street View technology from Google Maps is being used to present a 360 degree interior view of buildings, such as this one for Jan’s Hobby Shop on the Upper East Side.
Library Box
We watched the video about Library Box, a tiny wireless device that can be used to share files where there is no internet connection or where that connection is weak or heavily monitored or censored. More details about the project can be found on the Kickstarter page for it.
Laptop and iPad Mini Kiosks
Arthur gave us an update on the laptop and iPad Mini kiosks currently being set up by the reference desk. See the vendor’s website (Laptops Anytime) for additional info about the kiosks.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged ALA Annual, Badges, Floorplans, Gamification, Google Maps, iPad, Kiosks, Laptops, Laptops Anytime, Library Box, MOOCs, Tech Sharecase
2 Comments
Tech Sharecase, 24 May 2013
BrowZine
We looked at the demo video for BrowZine, an iPad/iPhone app that lets you browse the table of contents for journals your library has full text access to (more details at vendor website). We looked at the app that had already been installed on an iPad and configured to connect to Baruch’s journal collections. We talked about the increase use of iPads by faculty, the lack of an Android app for BrowZine, and, if we do get a subscription to the service, that it would be nice to load this app on the iPads the library lends.
Harvard Business Review and EBSCO
We talked a bit about the new additional limitations that Harvard Business Review is placing on its content in EBSCO.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Apps, BrowZine, Journals, Mobile Apps, Tech Sharecase
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3D Maps of National University of Singapore Libraries
The libraries at the National University of Singapore have an interesting web app and iOS app that offer an interactive and immersive 3D view of the floors of the library. Navigation via mouse on the web app or the touchscreen on an iPad or iPhone is a bit awkward, but this is really notable effort all the same.
Web app screenshot
iPad app screenshot
h/t Aaron Tay
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Tagged Apps, Maps, Mobile Apps, Web Applications
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Tech Sharecase, 10 May 2013
Primo vs. Summon vs. EBSCO Discovery Service
We watched a video from Ex Libris about Primo, a web-scale discovery tool that CUNY is working on a licensing for all of the CUNY libraries. We compared the interface with that of Summon (Bearcat Search) and with a trial we have from EBSCO of EBSCO Discovery Service.
Alma
We next looked at the nearly content-free video from Ex Libris about Alma, the company’s uniform resource management system (actual details of the system can be found on the Ex Libris site). Boston College is the first Alma customer to go live (details in this Digital Shift article from Library Journal).
PolicyMap
As a group, we thought it would interesting to poke around in the PolicyMap database we have a trial for (a link to it can be found on the “Trials” tab on the Databases page).
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Alma, Bearcat, Boston College, Database trials, Databases, Discovery tools, EBSCOhost, Ex Libris, Primo, Summon, Tech Sharecase
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Tech Sharecase, 26 April 2013
Making It Easier to Browse
We looked at StackLife, which has been set up for the new Digital Public Library of America and is being piloted for Harvard, too.
- explanation of the interface for the Harvard instance
- video overview of the Harvard instance
- the “about” page for the Harvard instance
- download page on Github
We also looked at how North Carolina State University libraries do a shelf browse. Here’s a sample record:
And here’s the “Browse Shelf” view for that book:
We then looked at BrowZine, an iPad app that lets you browse journals your library has online access to and save them to your bookshelf in the app. This video gives a good overview of what it looks like on an iPad.
An “Awesome” Recommender
Harvard has also been piloting its “Awesome Box” project. As books are returned to the library, patrons may elect to bypass the usual book drop off slot and instead place the book in an “Awesome Box” as a form of recommendation. Items returned that way show up in a special Awesome at the Harvard Library page (which features a RSS feed of items featured there).
New Baruch-FacStaff Wifi Coming
We learned about a new wifi channel, Baruch-FacStaff, that is being tested out now. When configured on your mobile device–laptop, phone, tablet–it will automatically connect you to the wifi network as soon as you come on campus and it will allow access to the network drives.
Harvard Business Review and EBSCOhost
We talked a bit about the recently announced restrictions on use of Harvard Business Review content in Business Source Complete. It’s not quite clear how or if this will affect our use of the journal.
New Baruch College App Preview
We got a preview of the not-yet-launched update to the Baruch College app (the current version can be found in the iTunes App Store).
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Apps, Browsing, BrowZine, DPLA, EBSCOhost, Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory, Library catalogs, North Carolina State University, Recommender systems, Serendipity, StackLife, Tech Sharecase, Wifi
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Trends in Scholarly Communication: Article-Level Metrics
SPARC just released a report that is meant to serve as a general introduction to article-level metrics, which SPARC says “are rapidly emerging as important tools to quantify how individual articles are being discussed, shared, and used.”
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Tagged article-level metrics, scholarly communication
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Profiles of Information Seeking in Everyday Life
We recently acquired a book published in 2011 by MIT Press, Everyday Information: The Evolution of Information Seeking in America, that might be a source of readings for many of our credit courses. Here’s the table of contents:
- Print edition
- Ebook (via ebrary)
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Tagged Books, Information literacy, Information seek
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Tech Sharecase, 22 March 2013
Access Services and the Reference Wiki
We talked about the way that Access Services staff have been adding pages regularly to the reference wiki and whether it might be worth renaming the wiki the “Public Services Wiki” to reflect this evolution.
Contracts and Vendor Relations
The increased demand by the state for documentation of interactions with vendors was explored.
Privacy
With the events at Harvard University in mind (the email of deans was searched by administrators trying to find the source of leaks about a cheating scandal), we discussed privacy issues in Baruch’s systems (email, Blackboard, etc.) and the Facebook page, Baruch Secrets (the Ticker covered Baruch Secrets in a story in January).
New Summon Interface
Summon, the service that powers Bearcat Search, will be getting a major overhaul in June. We looked at some of the new features.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bearcat Search, Blackboard, Privacy, Summon, Tech Sharecase, Wikis
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Tech Sharecase, 8 March 2013
Kaltura
We looked under the hood of Kaltura to see how tags and categories are set up and what analytics are available.
Draft of Wall Street Journal LibGuide
To make it easier to see all the print and online options for the Wall Street Journal, a new LibGuide is in the works. We previewed the new guide, which also features instructions with annotated screenshots of how to get to the News Pages feature in Factiva. We also discussed whether it would be worthwhile to do a similar page for the New York Times.
Screen Capture Software
We discussed the strengths and weaknesses of Captivate and Camtasia for video screen captures and SnagIt for image capture.
Guide on the Side
The library website for the University of Arizona features tutorials that appear to the left of selected databases. The libraries at the university developed their own open-source software (available for download) that others can use to design their own tutorials. Examples of some tutorials:
Factiva
We looked at examples in Factiva where the content found in search results actually links you out of the database and onto other parts of the web; some of those sites you are directed to are open, others are paywalled!
Google Sets
If you are creating a spreadsheet in Google Docs and want to create a list of similar items in a column, you can type two sample items in separate cells (such as pigeons and ducks) then easily have Google Sets supply in cells in the column additional items that are similar in nature. While the example on this page just shows days of the week as items you might want to auto-fill in a spreadsheet, it works with lots of other things as well (cities, colors, kinds of dogs, etc.) More details can be found on this post on the Google Operating System blog.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Camtasia, Captivate, Digital Media Library, Factiva, Google Docs, Google Sets, Kaltura, LibGuides, Screen capture software, Screencasts, SnagIt, Tech Sharecase
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