Using Google for Floor Maps and Interior Street Views

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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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Tech Sharecase, 25 July 2013

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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.

 

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Tech Sharecase, 24 May 2013

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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.

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3D Maps of National University of Singapore Libraries

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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

NUS Libraries web app

 

iPad app screenshot

NUS Libraries iPad app

h/t Aaron Tay

 

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Tech Sharecase, 10 May 2013

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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).

 

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Tech Sharecase, 26 April 2013

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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.

We also looked at how North Carolina State University libraries do a shelf browse. Here’s a sample record:

NCSU shelf browse 1

And here’s the “Browse Shelf” view for that book:

NCSU shelf browse 2

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).

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Trends in Scholarly Communication: Article-Level Metrics

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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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Profiles of Information Seeking in Everyday Life

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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:

Everyday Information--table of contents

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List of Questionable and Scam Journals

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Ryan Phillips

“Beall’s list”

Article in the New York Times covers “the dark side of open access,” detailing the effort of academics to identify and combat pseudo-science publications and those journals with less-than-rigorous standards for article submissions.

The sources cited are informative and useful for academics for avoiding scam publications and bogus conference offers. Jeffrey Beall’s website maintains a list of individual journals that have made his blacklist and the criteria in which he uses to identify these journals. Also, the special issue of Nature covering “The Future of Publishing” featuring articles “The dark side of publishing” and “Sham journals scam authors” among others.

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Tech Sharecase, 22 March 2013

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Stephen Francoeur

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.

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