Tag Archives: Tech Sharecase

Tech Sharecase, 19 February 2010

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Ryan Phillips

Attendees: Robert Drzewicki, Louise Klusek, Kannen Mohan, Mike Waldman, Arthur Downing, Joseph Hartnet, Ryan Phillips

Bing Augmented Reality Maps 
We began the Tech Sharecase by watching Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera’s TED presentation on Bing’s augmented-reality maps. The presentation demoed the image and video capabilities that have been integrated into Bing Maps. The demo features live video feed from Seattle’s Pike Place accessed directly from Bing. This is similar to rumored Google plan to move beyond Street Views to capture the inside of retail stores.

Applications for such capabilities in the Newman Library may include virtual tours of the library building as well as capturing the history of the building as a power station.  This could also be a solution to the lack of signage in the library.

More Online Map Discussion
The conversation then turned to Four Square. Four Square is a social networking tool that pinpoints geographic locations people visit and currently are. Users can view locations, called venues, and see what the venue has to offer, who’s been there and how often they’ve been there (through frequency of virtually tagging themselves). The person who “visits” the venue the most often becomes the “Mayor” of that venue. Currently, Stephen is the “Mayor” of the Newman Library on Four Square.

We discussed the possibility of a contest for students to compete to become the Mayor of the Newman Library on Four Square.

Also discussed is the website Please Rob Me which posts feeds of people announcing via twitter they’ve left their home. The site posts these as “Recent Empty Homes” and thus an opportunity for theft. The web site seeks to promote the dangers of announcing such information publicly, or as the website describes “The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.”

Google Newman Library

Googling "Newman Library"

We then discussed the misinformation in searching via Google Maps. For instance, if you google Baruch, the phone returned is for the dean of the Weissman School.  The website address returned when googling the Newman Library is athletics.baruch.cuny.edu.

Google News, Fast Flip, was also discussed. Fast Flip is the service at the bottom of Google News that allows you to flip through the stories as if flipping through a magazine. News featured here tend to be a combination of the odd, gossipy, science-oriented and tech-oriented.

Chat Widget in EBSCOhost
Changing topics entirely, we conversed about the new capabilities to add a chat widget into the EBSChost databases.  It’s possible for our 24/7 chat service to reside in a space on EBSCOhost. It would be an opportunity for students to access a librarian while searching any EBSCOhost database. 

A possible pitfall to adding a chat box would be a disconnect in context between the patron and librarian.  A Baruch Librarian, or another librarian in the QuestionPoint consortium, would not know if the patron came from EBSCOhost or the Newman Library webpage. If a different set of expectations existed, or a different type of question was being asked by a patron coming from EBSCOhost, it might lead to problems when a librarian is unaware of a patron’s origin.

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Tech Sharecase, 29 January 2010

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees: Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Randy Hensley, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Jin Ma, Ryan Phillips, Erica Sauer, Mike Waldman

iPad
We started off discussing the iPad release and some of the criticism of the device as being too locked down, filled with DRM restrictions, and further the use of apps, which some view as a problematic development that signals an effort to return to walled gardens of the web of the early 1990s. The device seems geared more toward consumption of content as opposed to a tool for creation. It was suggested the iPad may appeal to baby boomers looking for a simple computer. We also discussed how it may transform the world of periodicals.

New Paywalls on the Web
The discussion of the iPad led us to a discussion of the creation of new paywalls on the web. We referred to:

RDA Updates
This page on the CUNY Technical Services Wiki offered some updates about RDA from the ALA Midwinter meeting, including news about ALA’s announcement of pricing for the RDA Toolkit. More news about the testing and release of RDA can be found on the Library of Congress Bibliographic Control Working Group site.

Records in CUNY+ for CDs in Naxos
Baruch will be loading records into CUNY for the CDs that have available in streaming format via the Naxos database. Those catalog records will include direct URLs to albums in Naxos. Track-level records, though, will be not part of those catalog records. We were also reminded that the reference wiki includes instructions about how a professor can create a playlist in Naxos that can be shared with students.

New design for CUNY Website
We looked at the new CUNY website, which is still in preview mode right now. The CUNY Portal and other CUNY systems on the web will likely be redesigned in the image of the soon-to-be-launched main CUNY site.

CUNYfirst
We got an update on where we are in the rollout of systems in CUNYfirst, which brings together silos of data relating to finance, HR (now referred to as HCM for “human capital management), and student information.

LibGuides
We looked at a LibGuide set up for a LIB 1015 class and commented on the draft of a guide for MLA style. We also looked at the main LibGuides page for the whole system to see which ones in the system were most popular.

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Tech Sharecase, 13 November 2009

Posted on November 20, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

Attendees
Stephen Francoeur, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Jin Ma, Kannen Mohan, Ryan Phillips and Michael Waldman

Searching Blogs
Went over a patron request for finding quotes on blogs. The patron wanted to locate negative quotes about the Marvel acquisition by Disney. Discussed the resources for searching blogs: Factiva, Google Blog Search, LexisNexis and Twitter Search.

Baruch Blogs   
Noted how to find the RSS feed for the Newman Library News “blog.”  One has to navigate to the “News Archives” on library website (RSS icon not visible until you get to the WordPress version of the News Archives). Or, click on the following link: http://www.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/wordpress/?cat=4

Amazon Kindle
Discussed recent news that two colleges, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University, are not moving forward with wide distribution of the Kindle because of perceived discrimination against the blind.  Activating the audio feature on the current Kindle is a challenge for the blind given it requires navigating through the touch screen. Read the Associated Press article via NPR: “Schools shun Kindle, saying blind can’t use it”

Also discussed the Kindle application for desktop that was released this week.

Google Wave
Went over some features of Google Wave and Stephen and Jin demonstrated a discussion. Showed the Doctor Wave video which provides a good introduction to Google Wave. Cameron Neylon’s ChemSpidey robot, an application for tagging in Google Wave, was presented. Aunt Rosie translation robot was also shown.

EtherPad and Wikis for Student Participation
EtherPad and Wikis were discussed for use in class participation. Wikis in Blackboard can encourage class participation for those who prefer to type rather than speak aloud in class.

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Tech Sharecase, 30 October 2009

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Joseph Hartnett, Randy Hensley, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Ryan Phillips

Google Discover Music
Talked about new Google Discover Music service in which search results are more socially based and about October 23, 2009, radio story from On the Media, “Charting the Charts,” which noted how Billboard is waning in influence and new services are appearing that measure music success differently. One such services is Band Metrics that ranks popularity not by sales but by an aggregation of metrics, including social ones. Search is changing the economic model for music rankings. Big Champagne offers another service that measures rankings using social aspects. What is a credible or reliable metric is shifting from authorities like SoundScan or Billboard to services that look at social use of media.

Google Social Search
This experiment from Google looks at who is in your social graph (your collection of online friends) so that it can present you with search results that are refined by content that your friends have posted online.

Google Reader
We looked at the way that people who use Google Reader can friend others who use the service and share notable feed items with each other.

Google Site Search Tool
The Baruch College website today unveiled its new site search engine powered by Google. The library website will be changing its search site software to Google soon as well.

2D Barcodes
Following up on Arthur’s comments on an earlier blog post here, We talked about 2D barcodes, QR codes, and their potential uses by colleges and libraries. We looked at the barcode service from ScanLife and the video about how Case Western Reserve University used ScanLife codes.

Mobile Websites for Libraries
We talked about various strategies for creating library websites that would render well on browsers in mobile phones.

Amazon Kindle vs. Barnes & Noble Nook
While talking about basic differences between new Nook reader coming out in November, we also discussed the Kindle loan program at North Carolina State University and how the service also offers patron-driven acquisitions (hear all the details about this on the Library 2.0 Gang podcast from September 2009 in which Orion Pozo from NCSU was interviewed).

TinyURL vs. HugeURL
TinyURL is a well-known service that will shrink a long URL with a brief one that redirects you to the original site. HugeURL is a funny spoof that turns short URLs into obscenely long ones.

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Tech Sharecase, 16 October 2009

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Ellen Kaufman, Stephen Francoeur, Harold Gee, Joseph Hartnett, Ryan Phillips, Mike Waldman

ARC and ALEPH
We discussed the challenges that the CUNY Office of Library Services is facing as it tries to set up ARC (Aleph 500 Reporting Center), which is a product from Ex Libris that allows Aleph 500 customers to generate sophisticated reports on the items in the catalog and their use.

Capturing User Experience
Ryan discussed capturing user experiences, some ideas and tools presented by Michael Lascarides as part of the NYPL Service Excellence symposium in September. Michael Lascarides is a User Analyst with the Digital Experience Group at NYPL. His presentation was titled  “Uncovering Stories”. Two takeaways from his presentation discussed were how to capture user experiences and how users react to bad design and bad user experiences. One tool he mentioned for capturing users’ online experiences is Google Analytics, a tool for analyzing web site traffic. (If you are reading this blog post on the web, then you can view the slides from Lascarides’ presentation below.)

20090922 Lascarides

SFX Page with Links to Google Books
We discussed the draft of the SFX FIND IT page that offers Google Books as a target when the item presented is a book that happens to be fully or partially available in Google Books. We also discussed the problems we had a few years ago with a trial to Safari Books.

SFX and bX
We also discussed the Ex Libris bX Recommender, which would function similarly to the Amazon recommendation feature (i.e., “You might also like…”). This tool, highlighted in Eric’s recent email about SFX options, presents article suggestions when you click the SFX Find It link next to an item in your search results. Stephen mentioned that Dave Pattern of University of Huddersfield gave a presentation at Internet Librarian International on how he uses transaction data from his catalog for “you might like” feature in his catalog. (If you are reading this blog post on the web, you can view the slides below; otherwise, you can find them online at Slideshare.)

ILI2009: Exploiting Usage Data

View more presentations from daveyp.
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Tech Sharecase, 2 October 2009

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Jin Ma, Mike Waldman, Matt Haugan, Ellen Kaufman, Mike Waldman, Stephen Francoeur

EBSCOhost Integrated Search
Mike Waldman showed us this tool that CUNY is looking at and asked us to think about how it compared to Bearcat Search. EBSCOhost Integrated Search will search everything that CUNY Central pays for (as well as the unique EBSCOhost databases we’ve subscribed to). We can customize the display of search results so that the databases are grouped into first and second tiers. We took a look at how Brooklyn College has set up their instance of this tool. One difference that we noted was that Bearcat doesn’t have search field for “source” but the EBSCOhost Integrated Search does.

xFruits
We talked about how the free xFruits web services can be used to repurpose RSS feeds or to create new ones. For example, you can convert email into an RSS feed using this tool.

Google Wave
In light of this week’s release of beta invitations to Google Wave, we talked again about what this new tool might allow us to do.

Software for Collaboration and Communication
Ellen Kaufman talking about technology at her old job and how they used Microsoft Sharepoint, portals, and Confluence.

ticTOCs
This free service from JISC offers table of contents alerts as RSS feeds.

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Tech Sharecase, 18 September 2009

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Mikhail Gershovich, Tom Harbison, Gerry Jiao, Louise Klusek, Ryan Phillips, Linda Rath, Luke Waltzer

Mobile Web Development
A recent post by John Blossom on Robin Good’s blog (“Future of Mobile Web Applications: Applications Centered or Browser Centric?”) argues that the era we are in now of downloadable apps for phones may parallel the early days of the web when AOL and Compuserve offered the web via walled gardens; as the web developed, users left those walled gardens behind mostly and explored the open web. Blossom argues that the mobile apps are somewhat like AOL and Compuserve in that they enclose a small world of the web to make it manageable.

Google Voice
Stephen demonstrated Google Voice using his personal account, showing how it unifies phone numbers , allows web-based access to voice mail (including transcripts of those messages), and the abilit to send and receive SMS. Some libraries are using it for a text message reference service. The web-based interface for voice mail messages would be useful for a telephone reference service.

Blogging for Freshman Seminar
Luke talked about the blogging initiative for the Freshman Seminar this fall. In just two weeks, there are already 600 blog posts. You can search across all the blogs to see how students are talking about the library. As most students are new to blogging, the college offers guidelines for them. As a test of the possibility of making student blogs universal at Baruch, students in the Baruch Scholars sections of the freshman seminar will get to keep their blog accounts after the seminar is over and may continue to post.

We also discussed how the FRO blogging initiative and the Schwartz Institutes VOCAT tool might be incorporated into the library’s evolving plan for videos created by FRO students. (Note: VOCAT was discussed at the 25 June 2009 meeting of the Tech Sharecase.)

Online Video
As we discussed how student videos could be shared, it was noted that CUNY set up YouTube accounts for each college (Baruch’s is here). Our library had already set it up its own YouTube channel a few years ago. We discussed the functionality of our Digital Media Library and that there is an upgrade of it being planned now.

LibGuides
Stephen showed the LibGuides system briefly, including a draft of one of the guides that the committee working with testing the software has created. It was noted that LibGuides offers embed codes and a Facebook application that allows you to deploy widget versions of a guide.

Space for CUNY Faculty to Share Instructional Materials
Mikhail brought up Curriki as an interesting model for a project he’s part of that is looking for ways to make instructional materials created by CUNY faculty made available online. CUNY’s nascent institutional repository, a hosted DSpace instance, was mentioned as another possible tool that could be a part of the solution. MERLOT was also mentioned, although its collection is limited to multimedia instructional materials.

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Tech Sharecase, 4 September 2009

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Ryan Phillips
Attendees
Ryan Phillips, Louise Klusek, Stephen Francoeur, Jin Ma, Arthur Downing, Randy Hensley.

We started this Friday’s Tech Sharecase with a discussion of the recent news that Amazon, Microsoft & Yahoo will join the alliance opposing the Google Book Settlement. The Guardian interviewed Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive, who heads The Open Book Alliance’s opposition.
See the Searchengineland post about these developments with links to the Wall Street Journal & New York Times articles.

Blog Posts: Reading & Written Language
Next we discussed a couple posts at the Newman Library blogs from the past week. First, we discussed Stephen’s post on Groups/Tribes with no Written Language at Reference at Newman Library and David Broderson’s response. The impetus for the post was a class assignment that was driving several students to the reference desk. I brought up an example I’ve seen illustrating the difference between the interpretation of an illiterate vs a literate seeing the FedEx logo. A literate person fails to see the arrow in the FedEx logo between the ‘E’ &’ x’ while this is the first thing an illterate person sees.
We then discussed the Newman Library Idea Lab post about Maryanne Wolf and the current state of reading. Louise mentioned the Sunday New York Times article on the future of reading. The article discusses giving students the ability to choose the titles in their reading curriculum. Instead of adhering to the standard, required classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “The Great Gatsby” the article highlights one teacher’s effort to engage students interest in reading by allowing them to choose what they read.

Feed Readers

We revisited Feed Readers as a topic given a few of us have changed or are considering a change in our preferred reader. Stephen offered Feedly, a Firefox extension, as an alternative to the Google Reader format.

New EtherPad Feature

EtherPad recently introduced a new Time Slider feature that displays the complete history of a document’s alterations. To demonstrate, the following link allows you to view Stephen and I taking notes for this week’s Tech Sharecase.
Google Books Metadata Trainwreck article
Stephen discussed the Language Log post concerning the multitude of metatdata errors found the the book records in Google Books. The Language Log post discussed the origin of the errors and also, featured in the comment section, has a response from an individual at Google Books.
The blog post was filed by Geoffrey Nunberg who also authored an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the topic.
Screenjelly
Stephen gave a quick tour and tutorial for Screenjelly which he’s used to build tutorials for “How to Look up Books on Reserve” and to display an online tours of the New Reference Wiki and New Reference Blog
View Stephen’s hands-on example from this Friday’s Sharecase.
Text Messaging Reference Service
The last topic of the day was SMS text messaging as a reference service. We discussed getting a smart phone for the library equipped with a QWERTY keyboard. The idea is similar to NY’s service where a phone is shared among the librarians with each scheduled a time to cover the service. We discussed the benefits of adding this service. If this extended service was still within the regular operating hours of reference service, might this be best wedded to the deskstop?

Stephen mentioned MyInfoQuest, cooperative service designed to meet the need for text message reference. To demonstrate the need, a survey of library services desired by patrons via cell phone/mobile device was conducted at Ryerson College. The results are below.
Meanwhile, Questionpoint is integrating SMS text service through twitter feeds into their system in order to accept and push out answers to patrons via text.
Another service mentioned at the Sharecase was Text a Librarian, powered by Mosio.
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Tech Sharecase, 20 August 2009

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees

Ryan Phillips, Stephen Francoeur, Randy Hensley, Mike Waldman, Jean Yaremchuk, Joseph Hartnett

Squirrelizer and Cornify

Because we like to have fun as well as talk about serious topics, we started off with a couple of silly sites. Squirrelizer will insert the newly famous squirrel image into your pictures. Cornify will add pretty rainbows and unicorns to a web site or image (until your stomach turns).

Bing News vs. Google News

Google News offers a richer interface with better faceted navigation. Bing’s news section suffers at the moment from not having enough sources to provide, but Microsoft is likely working on lots of deals with news publishers now. It may be that Bing is also working on a finance section to rival Yahoo! Finance (although with the Yahoo!/Microsoft deal from last month, it’s not clear what’s going to happen). It was remarked that Bing is making a more competitive landscape now.

NewsGator
NewsGator announced that they are dropping its longtime desktop RSS reader and focusing on a mobile app version instead. Since Microsoft Outlook 2007 was released, which featured a built in RSS reader, the market for desktop RSS readers has declined. Jean mentioned that she used PHP to code her own desktop RSS reader.

Visio

Jean used Visio for a couple of things recently: for planning display cases layouts and for creating a Gantt charts. Maybe at an upcoming sharecase where there is a critical mass of library staff attending, she can give a demo of the software.

Exporting from Aleph

Jean created a script that will allow us to run reports on our subject areas and export to Excel.

Library Technology for Assistive Services

We talked about assistive technology that we have in the 3rd floor room and on the 2nd floor.

Library Web Site Design

A discussion about how we update content in our library web site led to a broader discussion of library web site design and looks at lots of notable sites. One resource that is helpful when talking about web site design is Jon Kupersmith’s Library Terms That Users Understand.

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Tech Sharecase, 6 August 2009

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Ryan Phillips
Attendees

Randy Hensley, Louise Klusek, Mike Waldman, Stephen Francoeur, Ryan Phillips, Arthur Downing, Frank Donnelly, Rita Ormsby.

AirBaruch

We discussed the history of AirBaruch and potential new services the library would want to offer.

Text Message Reference
Some ideas on how to market chat reference were shared, including promoting it as a service for students “on the go.” Since students are using the chat service from the convenience of their workstations, mobile devices, et cetera, it might be ideal to market chat reference as a service for “where you are.” NYU has a shared phone to cover the service.

Phone Reference

The text message reference led to a discussion on how we provide phone reference. We discussed to what extent should we promote and field reference questions at the reference desk? We also discussed how we could expand this service.

E-textbooks and E-books

Stephen discussed a pilot project for patron-initiated acquisitions of e-books at BMCC.

The library has been given funds to purchase textbooks in the fall for students; we are looking into the possibility of using some of that money to buy textbooks in an e-book format.

Mike is working with a CIS professor whose class has 2 required books that will be in ebook format (one a Kindle form and the other Books24x7). Newman Library will provide the Kindle.

Supporting Baruch’s Film Studies Minor

With the introduction of a new film studies minor, the library is looking into ways we can provide films to support the classes.
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