Farther Out

 

Farther Out Flickr LibraryThing Toolbars SecondLife and virtual reality teaching. September 26, 2007 Library Education Goes Virtual Readerware Drafts

 

[version 20071217a]

 

Flickr

 

Can an academic library use Flickr, the photo-sharing site?

Try the University of Michigan library's site on Banned Books.  Clever idea for promoting Banned Books Week.

 

LibraryThing

 

This is a popular book tool used by individuals and libraries at Librarything.com .

 

For me, the problem is: " Enter 200 books for free, as many as you like for $10 (year) or $25 (life)."  Well, I have more than 200 books in my to-read list, and I'm not sure that I need to have a life membership for something that might die in a few years.  Then again, it might not die. 

 

Danbury Library (a III library) has used LibraryThing with its catalog. 

 

Consider:

"Web application LibraryThing lets you catalog all the books you own and use tags to organize your collection. Add book titles by entering a title and viewing search results from the Library of Congress or Amazon. ... LibraryThing is an impressive cataloging app that feels like del.icio.us for books."  -- Lifehacker [one of my fave blogs! -dv]

 

"I was pleased with the ease of inputting my books, the ability to merge information from Amazon.com and the Library of Congress, and the ability to leave my library open to comments from other users. The interface is simple, practical, and not over-designed. Clearly, thought has been given to the user experience of actually inputting your book-list, and it only took me about twenty minutes to input over a hundred books."  -- Mankind Minus One/Max Temkin

 

I'm not sure if this is really for us, but check it out.  You might find it personally useful.

 

 

Toolbars

 

 

The big thing for a lot of libraries -- including academic ones like Virginia Tech -- is to offer a toolbar for browsers (IE and Firefox versions).

Virginia Tech uses the LibX toolbar (which is Firefox and just recently getting a beta version for IE).

 

Another resource is Conduit (here's the gallery of examples) which has some pretty cool versions.  Conduit allows a logo, name, search box, tools, messaging (we could have an IM here), and more.  It's free (there's a sponsor thing but we don't have to put it on -- it's complicated, but shouldn't be a problem.  See the examples).  Here and here are examples of what we might have, using Conduit or see the example shown here from U of Puget Sound).  It works on IE (I just tested the Puget Sound one on IE7) and Firefox.

 

The blog for library toolbars is here and has some info on who's doing what with what.

 

The graphic is typically a 16x16 pixel icon, often (but not necessarily) based on all or some part of one's logo or initials.  What you have on the rest is up to you, based on what is available and practical. 

 

The nice thing about toolbars is that by using the View dropdown menu, choosing Toolbars, you can enable or disable the toolbar if you like.  So, it's not forever or even all day, if you don't need it.

 

I think we should consider this as a good promotion.  See the blog on library toolbars for how it's working for some libraries. 

They get stats from Conduit, too -- might be something else for the Monthly Report. 

 

No, not everyone will use it... but then, who on campus uses EVERYTHING we have?  (WE don't use everything we have, individually!).  In a world offering more and more choices, offer one choice to at least some people.  Offer another choice to others.  It's the only way to reach as many as possible.

 

 

SecondLife and virtual reality teaching.

 

A number of the librarians at the Directors meeting that set up all those committees were talking about meeting in Second Life, rather than face to face.

Sort of "avatar to avatar"  ("why Bob, I didn't know you envisioned yourself with bat wings... The fangs are a bit over the top, though... ").

 

What if somebody (a company) invented a virtual world, that you could actually shape to your own desires, look the way you wanted to, walk or fly from place to place, meet new people and old friends (no matter what they choose to be in this virtual world!)... welcome to Second Life , where companies and libraries have virtual existence (with or without any existence in the real world).  This isn't the only such world, but it is (in 2007) the most famous and probably the most popular.

 

Murdoch University has information on teaching using Second Life.

 

 McMaster University Library has a Second Life presence. 

 

Graphically speaking, the appeal to libraries explained by Shelf Life .

 

On the other hand, you have Get a (Real) Life! which found no use for it, in that author's opinion.

 

And then, from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

September 26, 2007

Library Education Goes Virtual

The virtual campus of the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science was recently featured on KQED, a PBS-affiliated station in Northern California. The school has 16 acres in Second Life where it holds office hours and classes.

During the broadcast, the interviewer, Sheraz Sadiq, asks Linda Main, a faculty member at the library school, if it’s hard to have office hours with an avatar sporting a green mohawk and purple skin.

“Not at all,” she replies. “Some of our students show up that way in person.”—-Andrea L. Foster

Posted on Wednesday September 26, 2007

 

Readerware

 

I have over 2000 books, several hundred CDs, lots more LP records and cassettes at home ...  Yep, I must be a librarian.  So what software am I using to keep track of all of this?  Well, I just switched recently to Readerware  (I was using AVCataloger, but the bugs were limiting me).  Readerware has a books module, an audio module (CDs, cassettes, etc.), and a video module (DVDs, VHS).  Buy all, buy 1 or two. 

 

You can enter a list of ISBNs and have it search for them to download from multiple sources at one pass.

 

You can drag and drop URLs from sites like Amazon to download a lot of info into a record, and then finish it out with your own specifics. Since I had a lot of older books with no ISBNs, this was invaluable.

 

Will also download Dewey from LC records (or use LC class, if you like), if it's available, which is nice. 

 

I can print a list of just those titles I still need to take to the bookstore with me to hunt...  (well, I didn't claim it SAVED me money rather than helped me spend it, did I?).

 

I also have locations (library branches) for Fort Smith Public which have the books.  Find them in the online catalog, and then go to the library with a short list in hand to check them out.  (Okay, THAT saved me money...)

 

It's shareware -- you can try it out, and then pay for it to get the full use.   Reports can be customized to some extent (I did one for the bookstore list, based on the existing shopping list included), and the author tells me he's working on improving that function even more in the future.  There's a forum where you can check for how to do things, make suggestions (I did and the author responded).

 

You can also buy it with a light pen included -- which works about as well as our original light pen did (lots of attempts may eventually yield results... maybe).  Or, you can just enter ISBNs and other numbers manually, if you have them.  I also tried it with one of our Metrologic scanners, and it does fine, on books new enough to use the new 13-digit ISBN (but not the older codes which had nothing to do with ISBNs).

 

This has nothing to do with our work here, but if anyone asks, this is something they can try for their own collections.

 

Oh, and you can keep track of who borrowed what.  That's nice.

 

You can also print out a list of what you have as a catalog.

 

There are modules that allow you to put it on a handheld and take it along that way.

Drafts

 

 

Draft 1

Draft 2