While researching ways to make library tutorials by scanning the project of the month list for PRIMO (Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online), I found this interesting one from the University of Michigan that uses Qualtrics:
The tutorial itself is a nice model of a lightweight way to help students understand whether an article they’ve found is scholarly.
Amanda alerted me to this 2013 video we have available to us from Kanopy: Google and the World Brain. Here’s the synopsis of it from Kanopy:
In 1937, the science fiction writer H. G. Wells imagined a “World Brain” containing all of the world’s knowledge, accessible to all people, that would be “so compact in its material form and so gigantic in its scope and possible influence” that it could transcend even nation states and governments. Seventy years later, Google set about realizing Wells’ vision, launching a massive project to scan millions of books from university library collections — and triggering a fierce backlash in the process. When it was discovered that over half of the first ten million books Google scanned were still in copyright, authors from around the world joined together to wage a fierce legal battle against the Internet giant, culminating in a dramatic courtroom showdown in 2011.
In gripping detail, Google & the World Brain tells the fascinating story of this complicated struggle over intellectual property and access to human knowledge, offering crucial insights into broader debates surrounding data-mining and privacy, downloading and copyright, fair use, freedom and surveillance.
A pair of researchers at Utrecht University Library have been studying the shifting scholarly communication workflows in a major project they call “Innovations in Scholarly Communication.” They’ve done a number of great presentations that capture the adoption and use of various tools and systems that researchers use for:
You can take their survey yourself and then get a customized report back that compares your tool use to others. Here’s mine.
This is a great and easy way to learn about new tools and might be something to share with faculty you work with across campus. If school wants to benchmark practices across campus, you can contact the survey authors to set up a custom URL and survey dataset.
Today was nearly an all-Google discussion.
Google Cardboard
Today we had two fully assembled virtual reality kits to use to try out various Google Cardboard apps. We found the images weren’t always in stereo and the kits themselves a bit flimsy. Some of the apps we tried out:
We also found some libraries that have purchased Google Cardboard headsets for various purposes:
Google Photospheres
The Google Camera app does a nice job of making photospheres:
Google+ Page for the Library
We took a look at the Google+ page for the library and the reviews that visitors have left.
Google Tone
We learned about a new experimental extension for the Google Chrome browser called Google Tone that lets you share a URL in your browser with nearby computers using an audible tone broadcast from your computer’s speaker.
Digital Measures
We talked about the strengths and weaknesses of Digital Measures.
We spent the entire time assembling a cardboard virtual reality kit for Google Cardboard that came with less-than optimal printed instructions. Thankfully, there was a video on YouTube to get us through the many fiddly bits:
If you’re looking for an open access journal to publish in, a great place to learn about which ones are out there is to browse the listings in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Here’s a filtered browse I created for “library science’ journals published in the United States (you can tinker my search to make it more global or to add in other related subjects).
Edward Snowden and Government Surveillance
We watched two video clips of Edward Snowden being interviewed by John Oliver (the language and humor may not be for everyone);
Passwords
After watching Edward Snowden’s take on passwords (actually, he recommends passphrases as more secure), we talked about the Diceware method of generating super secure passphrases.
Google Cardboard
From Arthur, we learned about the Google Cardboard project that allows you use a simple cardboard set of goggles (that you can buy or make yourself) and a smartphone to create a really impressive virtual reality headset. Here’s a video we watched to learn more about it:
Next Meeting of the Tech Sharecase
We might bring in a Google Cardboard headset kit, build it, and try it out (I promised I would buy one of my own for this).
Library Journal‘s current issue offers a series of “Year of Architecture” articles on notable new library buildings and redesigns:
I’ve been playing around with the Google Camera app that lets you take immersive, Google Street View-like pictures (Google calls them photo spheres). You make a photo sphere by taking pictures all around you and then letting the app stitch the images together. Sometimes the stitching is pretty good, sometimes there are a lot of weird artifacts. Here are some photo sphere pictures of our library and my office that I took yesterday and today. If you download the pictures, they don’t have that interactive immersive effect that you see when you view them on your phone in the app or when you view them in Google+.
Here’s an video showing you how to take pictures in the photo sphere mode of the Google Camera app:
As you can see from the video, you can upload these to Google Maps so that when someone is viewing a place on the map, they’ll be able to check out any photo spheres that are affiliated with that place (more details here).
I haven’t found a way yet to embed a photo sphere in your own site; it seems like you have to click over to a Google website that hosts the image to get the interactive and immersive experience. If there is a way to embed the images, they’d be fun to add to the library website.
Half a dozen folks showed up to talk about screencapture software, the theme of the day. Here are the tools we focused on:
Microsoft Office’s “screenshot” command
Uses for Screenshots
Best Practices for Screenshots
To Do Lists and Notetaking Systems
We started talking about software and websites for managing to-do lists and then about ways to keep notes about literature you’re reading. Here are the things that came up in that conversation:
Ideas for Future Tech Sharecase Meetings
