Tech Sharecase, 14 July 2011

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Lisa Ellis, Stephen Francoeur, Joseph Hartnett, Jin Ma, Ryan Phillips, Stella Varveris, Michael Waldman

Intro
In advance of the meeting, attendees were asked to focus on the topic of social networks and academy:

  • how do students use social networks and which ones are they using now?
  • what might students expect of the library and its staff who are on the same social networks (for example, how do they want to interact with an institutional accounts on networks? how do they want to interact with us as library staff with personal/professional accounts on these networks?)
  • how do faculty use social networks and which ones are they using now
  • how is scholarly communication being altered by the growth of social networks (see, for example, this report by the Centre for the Study of Research Communications at the University of Nottingham titled “Social Networking Sites and their role in Scholarly Communications”pdf)
  • how we we use social networks for professional development? for pinging the hive mind?

What We Discussed Regarding Social Networks

Mobile Databases Page
We got a preview of the mobile databases page that will link users to library databases that are optimized to work on mobile phones. The page itself is just an ordinary LibGuide page that looks kind of odd in a regular browser but renders in a much more mobile friendly way in a phone’s browser. The draft of the page shown was the result of the second round of usability testing; the release version of the page will be subject to one more round of usability testing.

LibX Toolbar
A new Firefox/IE toolbar is being developed that will let users search the catalog, our e-journals lookup tool, or Bearcat regardless of what site the user happens to be on. Another notable feature is that when the user is on a book page in Amazon or other online booksellers, a Bearcat icon will appear on the screen that when clicked will run an ISBN lookup in the catalog to see if we own a copy of that item.

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Next Tech Sharecase on 28 July 2011

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

The next meeting of the Tech Sharecase will be Thursday, July 28, from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm in room 320a in the library. Please bring at least one example of a technology that can be used to inspire and enable creativity in the classroom. By “c lassroom,” that can mean a physical space or an online space for distance ed classes.

Hope to see you there.

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Monkeying around with copyright.*

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Ryan Phillips

An interesting story related to copyright has been developing since last week. The story centers on photographs taken by a Macaque monkey in the company of nature photographer David Slater. During a photo expedition in Indonesia, Mr. Slater’s camera was briefly lifted by said monkey and while the camera was in her possession, she managed to snap a few spectacular photos of herself. Mr. Slater was able to retrieve his camera and the photographs were published in the Daily Mail earlier this month.

Techdirt posted the photos and wrote a short article that questioned who actually owns the copyright of the photos, if anyone. The Caters News Agency, representing David Slater, claims ownership but since the photographer, in this case the monkey, generally has the right to ownership, Techdirt’s Mike Masnick questioned the legitimacy of this claim. This article is linked below:

Masnick, Mike. “Monkey Business: Can A Monkey License Its Copyrights To A News Agency?” Techdirt. Web. 7 July 2011.

Then, last week, Techdirt posted another article detailing the correspondence between a representative at Caters News Agency and Mike Masnick where the former requests the latter remove the photos from the Techdirt website. This request came about despite the ambiguity of the copyright law with respect to photographs of such origin. Citation/link below:

Masnick, Mike. “Monkeys Don’t Do Fair Use; News Agency Tells Techdirt To Remove Photos.” Techdirt. Web. 12 July 2011.

This weekend, On the Media also covered this story cast in the broader context of the PROTECT IP Act, introduced to the Senate in May of this year.

On the Media. “Congress, copyrights and monkeys.” Web. 15 July 2011.

*I apologize for the simian pun.

 

 

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Tech Sharecase on Social Networks

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

Tomorrow’s Tech Sharecase (14 July 2011, 12:30 pm – 1: 30 pm, room 320a) will focus on social networks. In the original email invitation I sent out, I asked everyone to think about what social networking sites they use. I think we should expand that a bit and think instead about social networks and the academy:

  • how do students use social networks and which ones are they using now?
  • what might students expect of the library and its staff who are on the same social networks (for example, how do they want to interact with an institutional accounts on networks? how do they want to interact with us as library staff with personal/professional accounts on these networks?)
  • how do faculty use social networks and which ones are they using now
  • how is scholarly communication being altered by the growth of social networks (see, for example, this report by the Centre for the Study of Research Communications at the University of Nottingham titled “Social Networking Sites and their role in Scholarly Communications”pdf)
  • how we we use social networks for professional development? for pinging the hive mind?
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Tech Sharecase, 30 June 2011

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Stephen Francoeur, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Rita Ormsby, Mike Waldman

Today’s Topic
Attendees were asked to come to today’s meeting with something related to search (a new search engine, a new search feature or interface, an article or blog post about search, etc.)

Guide to Searching
We looked at a video tutorial and companion website from the library at the University of Massey (NZ) that walked users through the basics of search. We liked the website’s screenshot and the way the video had a table of contents that let you jump head to a specific section.

DRAGNET
The library at the New York Law School has a search tool called DRAGNET that lets you find laws and other legal materials on various free legal databases. It was built using Google Custom Search. More details about how the service was put together can be found on this ACRL page. We wondered what it would be like to do something like this ourselves that searched a collection of open business-related databases on the web. We also talked about the plans for the Law.gov website, which are underway and will assemble a free resource of the nation’s laws.

One Search Boxes on Library Websites
Following up the discussion of search tools built with Google Custom Search, we looked at a Jamun, project being developed by the Leddy Library at the University of Windsor by Art Rhyno and Mita Williams. This tool will offer users a single box that searches across a number of different key resources. We also looked at the single search box (QuickSearch) that the library site at North Carolina State University features. We tried a bunch of different searches to see what comes up (notes of our searches didn’t get recorded, but you can try this one for “market share honda” as a useful example).

A Model for Teaching Search
We talked about librarian Iris Jastram’s model for teaching search, which she calls “exploding an article” and outlines in this blog post at Pegasus Librarian. In the classroom, students are introduced to the concept of being able to take one scholarly article that is relevant to them and use it to move in different directions to find others like it:

  • using Web of Science, you can move forward in time by looking for articles that have cited the one in hand
  • using the bibliography in the article, you can move back in time by tracking down the sources that the author used
  • using key terms in the article or in the descriptors for that article in a database, you can move to the sides to find articles that are about the same things

LibX Toolbar
We looked at a draft of a Newman Library toolbar that was built using the free LibX service. The toolbar features a search box for the library catalog, for the e-journals lookup tool, and for Bearcat. It also turns ISBNs, ISSNs, and DOIs into clickable links that will run lookups in relevant search tools from the library. Finally, it places an icon on the pages describing books in Amazon and other online booksellers; when the icon is clicked, the toolbar runs a search for that item in our catalog. This toolbar for our library is still being finished up and will be available soon.

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Tech Sharecase, 10 June 2011

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Randy Hensley, Curtis Izen, Ellen Kaufman, Jin Ma, Mike Waldman, Kevin Wolff

Introduction
The focus this day was on website design. Attendees were asked to come with any notable website that featured interesting design elements or that was about website design.

LibX Toolbar at Murdoch Library
Libraries can create toolbars via the free LibX service that users can install in their browsers. The toolbar features search boxes for the library’s catalogs and other resources, automated linking from ISBNs and ISSNs on websites to a catalog lookup, and more. We watched this video by librarian Kathryn Greenhill that explains to library users at Murdoch Library how to get the most out of its LibX toolbar.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Dqo24nS2MHw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Elsevier’s Guide to Web Design
We took a look a 2004 guide published by Elsevier, How to Design Library Web Sites to Maximize Usability (pdf).

Design Tensions
We talked about how website design depends on striking a balance between competing demands:

  • innovation vs. predictability (new approaches and ideas to design are always needed but you have to mindful of the expectations of the user who has gotten used to things on the web looking and behaving in certains ways)
  • text vs. images (how to balance the use of words and images for the purposese of site and page navigation; for communication of important information; and for use as mnemonic devices that help users who return to your site and want to find their way around again based on their recall of how things worked the last time they visited)

Mathews, Brian. “Web Design Matters” Library Journal, 15 Feb. 2009.
This Library Journal article by Brian Mathews from 2009 offered some good design advice.

NCSU Libraries: Learning Commons
The website for the learning commons at NCSU Libraries had a number of features that caught our eye:

  • “Top Viewed FAQs This Week”
  • Widget displaying photos and videos on Flickr (although we questioned what the point of this was)
  • Technology lending widget that offers slideshow of gadgets you can borrow

College Library Website of the Month
The College Libraries Section of ACRL offers a monthly showcase of notable library sites.

Museum Websites
Intrigued by the somewhat similar needs of a museum website (hours/directions, online exhibits, offer access to resources), we took a look at a number of websites to see if they had any interesting design elements:

One-Pager
The One-Pager is the creation of two three librarians (Aaron Schmidt and Amanda Etches-Johnson) who have a web design business, Influx together, and Nate Hill. They designed a super streamlined template that libraries can download and freely use. We agreed that this interesting design really would work only for small public libraries but it was notable all the same, especially because it was designed with mobile users in mind first.

Super Stripped Down Library Home Page
One idea that came up at the very end of the meeting was to imagine what a library home page would be like if it had nothing other than two search boxes on it: search for sources and search for services. The first search box would be a single box that would get articles, books, images, data, etc. The second box would be return results from an index of the library website.

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Alumni Guest Accounts

Posted on June 21, 2011 by adowning

As we prepare for the launch of the new WiFi service in the library, we are examining how repeat “guest” users may be more easily accommodated.  Alumni constitute an important segment of this user population.  In the past three years the library created 3,773 guest accounts (with a 24 hour expiration) for 825 alumni users.  The data suggest that the assignment of accounts to all alumni may not be worthwhile.  Fifty-six percent of the alumni guest account users were “one-time-only” users.  Eighty-four percent of the users obtained a guest account 1 to 5 times over three years.  It may make more sense to reach out to frequent users and provide them with accounts that have longer service periods.  Only 21 users averaged at least one use per month over three years and one user was responsible for 6% of the total accounts issued.

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Next Tech Sharecase on Friday, June 10, To Discuss Website Design

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

The next get together of the Tech Sharecase will be on Friday, June 10. At the last meeting, we had a great discussion of the issue of excessive printing by students, faculty, and staff on campus and ways that we could move to being less reliant on paper printouts. You can read notes from that meeting as well as all the previous ones by visiting the tag for “Tech Sharecase” on this blog.

Since the themed meetings have been working well, I thought that at this Friday’s meeting we could talk about any aspect of website design that has our attention on that day. It would be great if you could bring to the meeting at least one example of a notable college or library website that exemplifies something important we should keep in mind as the Newman Library’s website gets redesigned.

Hope to see you this Friday!

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Tech Sharecase, 27 May 2011

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Curtis Izen, Ellen Kaufman, Rita Ormsby, Bruce Small, Mike Waldman, Kevin Wolff

Today’s meeting was a discussion of ways we could cut back on the amount of printing by students, faculty, and staff on campus. We started off by looking at student printing and whether the file types most commonly printed–Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF. We considered a variety of ideas and issues:

  • what if we could distribute more e-reader devices that would hold all the items on reserve (copyright issues would likely ensue)?
  • students want to annotate and highlight what they read, which is easy to do if they have printed copies; what software programs do we have now that easily allow students to markup electronic files as they read and then save that annoated version? can annotations made in Adobe Acrobat Reader be saved or do you need to use a separate PDF reader to get that function?
  • can we tinker with the default printing options for PowerPoint files so they automatically print out multiple slides on page (probably n0t)?
  • can we reward students in some way if they have still have unused print credits at the end of the semester?
  • can faculty who expect students to bring printed copies of PowerPoint slide sets to class find other ways to have the material in front of students during class?
  • if we had Blackboard set up so it would work on mobile devices, would that encourage more students to download course handouts, etc. on their phones for reading instead of printing them?
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Typography Treatment in New Web Site

Posted on June 3, 2011 by adowning

Below is the typography treatment that will be used in the Library’s new web site.

 

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