Tag Archives: NYPL

Tech Sharecase, 9 March 2012

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Ryan Phillips


Food & Technology

In celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the Oreo®, we enjoyed Oreos with our brown bag lunches. This lead to a discussion about the
technology used in manufacturing products like Oreos. The Food Network show Unwrapped was mentioned as they explore “the test kitchens and the secrets behind lunch box treats, soda pop, movie candy, and more.” We also searched the website of the reference publication How Products are Made for Oreos, to no avail. However, M&Ms®  are included in the publication.

The conversation steered toward different technologies and a UPS documentary about the company workings in Louisville, KY.  The NYPL conveyor belt system was mentioned. The following NYTimes article has a write up and includes video: “That Mighty Sorting Machine Is Certainly One for the Books.”

Coutts Oasis

We also discussed eBooks and Coutts Oasis incluidng searching publications, picking edition preference by cloth, paper and myilibrary Coutts. We also discussed the capability to add slip and e-slip plans to your Coutts profile by defning your subject area.  Users who set up this option will recieve notifications for new titles in the defined subject area.

Lastly, we named the other resources we use for making title selections including  Amazon, WorldCat, book reviews, faculty suggestions et cetera.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tech Sharecase, 9 March 2012

Tech Sharecase, 9 July 2010

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Ryan Phillips

Attendees:  Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Ryan Phillips, Jim Livornese, Michael Waldman.

We began the sharecase by welcoming Jim Livornese, the new Director of Instructional Technology & Client Services at Baruch College. We spent some of our time talking to him about the library’s technology needs.

We also entertained a brief discussion of Drupal and METRO’s offer of two July courses on Drupal.  Courses are full and registration is closed. NYPL is also hosting a NYPL Drupal Camp at the end of August which is also full.  The interest in Drupal may have to do with  NYPL’s recent move to Drupal.

Usage of Online Tools

We then discussed a lead from AL Direct referring to a WebJunction survey on librarians’ use of technology tools entitled “Library Staff Report Their Use of Online Tools” The methodology for the survey is not given, so we were somewhat wary of the results; however, it showed librarians are lagging behind in the use of newer online tools such as RSS feeds and Blogs (see image below).

We then discussed finding a way for the library to place books in the public domain on the Kindle, or similar device–Nook or Sony e-Reader, et cetera. Books to be targeted will be English classics that are required reading for literature courses on campus.

The conversation then moved to the iPhone QR code reading application iCandy from Ricoh Innovations. Richoh is also working on integrating visual search into the application. This will allow users to point their device at text on a newspaper, for example, and the app will retrieve results based on the text that is read. It’s similar to the Shazzam application that listens to music and then recognizes the song that was played.

We then discussed the library’s purchase of  Kik Scanner Bookeye 2 and how to make it available for use in the library and to the Baruch community.

Lastly, we discussed the state and challenges of student printing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tech Sharecase, 9 July 2010

Gartner Releases Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012

Posted on November 20, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

A Gartner press release has been issued for their October report “Dataquest Insight: The Top Ten Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012.”  We don’t have access to the full Gartner report, so this press release gives us a bit more information.

Observing this report, the Gartner Hype Cycles for consumer mobile applications and maybe even simply the increased use of mobile devices in the Newman library, we can safely assume will be responding to this trend in our profession. The top ten applications are listed below.

  1. Money Transfer
  2. Location-Based Services
  3. Mobile Search
  4. Mobile Browsing
  5. Mobile Health Monitoring
  6. Mobile Payment
  7. Near Field Communication Services
  8. Mobile Advertising
  9. Mobile Instant Messaging
  10. Mobile Music

Also, I attended the Columbia University Libraries Assessment Forum thursday where Michael Lascarides of NYPL spoke about user experiences in his presentation “Uncovering Stories.”  He noted in one of his slides, in the past 18 months, mobile users accessing the NYPL website increased sevenfold.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Gartner Releases Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012

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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tech Sharecase, 16 October 2009