Tag Archives: mobile web development

Tech Sharecase, 15 April 2011

Attendees
Stephen Francoeur, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Jin Ma, Ryan Phillips

xtranormal
We checked out a number of library related videos created using the xtranormal service, which lets you create animations.


“Library School: Hurts So Good”

“My Rules for Using Law Library Reference”

Video Interviews of Baruch Professors
At the recent Baruch Teaching and Technology Conference, Keri Bertino from the Writing Center spoke about a project she’s undertaken with a peer tutor to interview Baruch faculty about what research looks like in their disciplines. The interviews are recorded and will eventually be available as videos. This teaser video gives a sense of what the content will be like in the final videos.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/B4rFKgYComA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Using Video to Evoke Critical Stances from Students
We talked about this news story from InsideHigherEd (“Calibrating Students’ B.S. Meters,”15 April 2011) that spotlights the work of librarians using videos in classrooms to engage students in critical thinking.

Mobile Library Websites
A recent blog post at iLibrarian featuring 7 ways to build a library website for mobile devices was discussed.

joli Cloud OS
Stephen showed his Dell Mini laptop that was running Joli OS instead of Windows. Joli is built on Ubuntu.

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Tech Sharecase, 5 March 2010

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Robert Drzewicki, Stephen Francoeur, Ryan Phillips

Mobile Phones
We looked at a report from Gartner that predicted sales of mobile phones with touchscreens are expected to rise 97 percent in 2010. We also wondered if we were able to track how many visitors to the library’s website came there on mobile devices. There is some data to that effect in our library’s website statistics if you look at what browsers and operating systems were used by site visitors, but the data isn’t as complete as we’d hoped it might be. We also talked about how much we know about the extent to which Baruch students have adopted the latest cell phone technology.

Ebooks and Ebook Readers
After looking at a graphic from the New York Times comparing the “economics of producing a book” in print vs. electronic, we had a discussion of our school’s Kindle experiment and what we might do with the Kindles after the semester is over. One idea that was floated was what it might mean were we to load public domain editions of books that are required reading in undergraduate courses (especially ones that are part of the general education curriculum).

We watched a video from Flat World Knowledge about their “open textbooks” that can be freely read online as well as purchased as a file download or a print-on-demand book.

Video Collections
We looked at the way that the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University has created a “Toolkit” site where screencasts are collected. Each video offers an embed code, making it easy for instructors and librarians to deploy the videos on course websites, course blogs, etc. The embed codes are for the hosted webservice where the video file actually resides (YouTube, etc.). It doesn’t appear that the videos are locally hosted on the Toolkit site.

We also browsed the collection of screencasts that have been uploaded to our library’s YouTube account.

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Tech Sharecase, 30 October 2009

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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Library Services for Mobile Development

At the LITA Forum 2009, Joan K. Lippincott from the Coalition for Networked Information, gave a nice keynote address on mobile web development for libraries, which you can listen to online (or go here to download the MP3). As I listened to it this morning on the subway, it made me wonder about two things:

  1. Does our library web site convey to our users in one central space all the “mobile services” that we offer? Should we? What would we list there?
  2. What should our vision of mobile web services look like? It’s likely that in the coming years we’ll want to provide a considerable amount of services and resources in a way that is optimized for mobile deveices. Which services and resources should we focus on first?
  • The library web site. What does our library web site look like in a browser on mobile devices? Should we develop a slimmed down web site for the mobile web? Develop an app that people can download to their phones that offers key services and resources?
  • Access to the catalog? Does it help that our users can use the mobile version of WorldCat.org to access our holdings info? Is that good enough? Can our Aleph 500 implementation be optimized for display on phones, etc.? As I was typing this post, a student showed me his phone with a list of call numbers he’d found in the catalog and typed into the notepad feature of his cell phone. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the catalog had a link next to the call number that would allow searchers to have the call number sent to their phones as a text message?
  • Access to licensed resources? Which databases can be searched via mobile devices? Does Bearcat Search work on a mobile device?
  • Access to Digital Media Library content? Will our videos play on their devices?
  • Instructional tutorials?
  • Ask a librarian? If we launch a text message reference service, this would provide an important connection to the population of students who rely on their phones as their main communication tool.
  • Blackboard? Since we offer credit courses, what do our course sites in Blackboard look like on a smartphone?
  • Interlibrary loan? Will it work on their devices? Does it display properly?
  • Serials Solutions A-Z journal list and SFX. These are key tools to connect our users to licensed content.
  • Online exhibits?
  • Library borrower’s accounts in Aleph 500?
  • Docutek course reserve system and the materials we’ve added as PDFs?

Lippincott, Joan K. “Mobile Technologies, Mobile Users: Will Libraries Mobilize?” LITA Forum 2009, Salt Lake City. 2 October 2009. Address. Web.

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