Tag Archives: Wifi

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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Tech Sharecase, 13 May 2011

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Stephen Francoeur, Curtis Izen, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Darryl Minor, Michael Waldman

bX Recommender Service
We watched this video from Ex Libris about the bX service, which CUNY has a trial for.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/YvrPhATtGvY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

One interesting reaction to the service that came up was that there is a disconnect between the label on the Find It button and the fact that when you get a SFX menu after clicking that Find It button, you not only see information about how to track down that article but you also get “more items like this” kind of recommendations about that article. Perhaps the Find It button we use should be relabeled to suggest in some way that it is also a “more like this” button.

Guest Logins
We talked about some of the issues with the guest login system, including the fact that the server for it needs to be rebooted too frequently (we often notice at the reference desk that the system is hung up and requires a call to the Help Desk to get it restarted). We also wondered if we’d be able to generate guest logins that last more than 24-hours at a time (perhaps a week, a month, or even a semester).

New Wireless Network
We talked about the new wireless network that is coming this summer. Devices with wireless cards can already detect signals from the new network but, since the system is still being tested right now, you are unanable to connect to it. Status of work on the new network can be found on a BCTC page dedicated to the upgrade.

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