I'm #1! I'm #1!

Kind of :) A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library & Information Science edited by Priscilla K. Shontz and Richard A. Murray is now available. The chapter I wrote is Chapter 1: Adult Services Librarian. A funny aside to this is that when I sent the chapter to Priscilla, I had no idea what my chapter number would be and without thinking, I put the title as "Chapter XXX: Adult Services Librarian". I was oblivious about it until Priscilla pointed it out to me. Anyway, this is a great book for library school students still trying to figure out exactly what jobs to pursue and those interested in potentially becoming librarians. Those who have become bored or unchallenged in the positions they're currently in should also check it out to see if there are other specialties they may be interested in.

More Twitter thoughts

With my envy for those going to CiL this weekend at the fore of my thoughts, and seeing Michelle's post in my Bloglines this morning, I realized Twitter would be good for those of us who aren't married to their cell phones for text messaging purposes, but adore our PDAs when trying to notify friends of our locations at conferences. ACRL was my first time really putting my cell phone through its texting capability paces. I didn't have my PDA with me, as it was enjoying an unexpected vacation at my parents' house, but as there was free wireless available, I would have easily been able to update my Twitter account with my location without messing around with texting and the accompanying charges. I'm trying to remember now if Marc Smith talked about Twitter in particular when he mentioned MoSoSo in his January presentation. The Twitter Fan Wiki has been of some help, and I'd recommend it for anyone wanting to look further into Twitter's uses. I'm still not sure how to best utilize Twitter in a library setting, but I can see some of the personal uses. Once again, with social networking software, an application is not going to be used if the user cannot see how it applies to their life.

Creating Passionate Users: Update/Joint Statement with Chris Locke

Watch CNN tomorrow

I'm going to make the extra effort to wake up long enough to watch this.

Creating Passionate Users: Update/Joint Statement with Chris Locke

ACRL Photos on Flickr

People have been furiously adding their conference photos to Flickr in anticipation of the contest deadline of April 8th. There are some wonderful photos in there, and yes, some of them are mine.

Flickr: Photos from acrl2007

ACRL - Day Four, Part Two

Morning Session, Part Two:
Analog v. Google in the CMS: RSS Feeds to the Rescue presented by Heather L. Moulaison and Edward M. Corrado from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ)

I thought the presenter looked familiar; I went to grad school with Heather.

CMS = Course Management System as opposed to Content Management System (ie. Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle, etc.)

1 Course shell = 1 class section

TCNJ uses a homegrown CMS.

Mix of systems may be used.

I'm familiar with a lot of CMS functionality as I worked for the UIUC GSLIS Instructional Technology Office, which supported the LEEP program, for one year in grad school. The CMS used at that time was of the homegrown variety, but they now use Moodle.

TCNJ's version is SOCS (Simple Online Courseware System)

TCNJ focuses on print resources. Nearly all students live on campus close to the library.

A little multi-media with some foreboding music with the "Google lurks..." slide.

"RSS - Result Set Syndication" from Walter Lewis.

Previous versions of RSS are not that compatible with older versions (<- did not know this)

Anatomy of a RSS feed - explanation of how they use it

Three stage process in integration of RSS with CMS.

More info: http://www.tcnj.edu/~library/rss/

Need to sell faculty and IT staff on why the library needs to be involved in the development/management of CMS.

Main use of RSS at this time is highlighting new books that may be of use for a course.

RSS feed for databases has been requested by faculty.

New DVD feed in top 5 most used resources on Library portion of the website in the last two months.

Course guides by librarians have been integrating the homegrown RSS feeds as well as featuring RSS feeds from other sources like specific websites and blogs and del.icio.us.

Students interested in one-stop shopping and want the course guides in SOCS rather than just on the library's website.
- The library resources need to be involved in the CMS, not just the librarian.

Up next (providing wireless access, Nina Totenberg.

ACRL - Day Four, Part One

You get to see how I take notes!

Session of the morning:

PennTags: Building a Social Tagging System in an Academic Library presented by Laurie Allen

UPenn is University of Pennsylvania in Philly

(Michael Winkler is the tech end of the presentation, but not present.)

PennTags = del.icio.us for the Penn community
- If they've got it on the web, it's taggable or will be soon. Ie. OPACs, etc.

Users collect resources
- add tags like del.icio.us
- unlike del.icio.us, long annotations are possible (specifically in response to one assignment on campus)
- annotations displayed in OPAC records and on PennTags website, RSS feeds, etc.

Copyright used 4 times more often than fair use.

Most recent posts go to the top of the page below tag cloud on main page.

If in OPAC, in tagged list, title linked to record.

PennTags projects, example given "Reclaiming p2p" found by just clicking through various tags.

Demo of how users actually use PennTags.

Call number included in citation record.

Recent tags available for quick addition.

SFX/RFX links available in a database means you can use PennTags to tag content.

Bookmarklet (like Blogger's) available for general webpages (doesn't really work in Safari).

PT too small to use as a way to find resources, at this point more as a personal collection tool.

PT *NOT* a replacement for the catalog.
- Not a part of the MARC record.
-- PT display a separate part of the record's page load.
- When searching in Franklin, you are searching that database and may stumble upon a book that's tagged, when using PT, all books in Franklin that are tagged.

PT
- Sub for del.icio.us for academic purposes
- Annotated bibliographies (previously mentioned)
- Base for research guides by libns
- "Shadow" catalog - specialized collections by enthusiasts - dkelly's for music scholarship

PT designed *FOR* the Penn community.

"Books are for use"
What used to be private types of use is moving into the public sphere (categorizing, remembering, etc.)
-- Libraries need to be more involved because of this.

PT has not ever been marketed, only really shown to the one instructor's classes.
- More librarians in general libraryland know about PT than Penn community members.

Working on a new version and when that's available a large marketing campaign will be launched.
-- New version will be more robust in functionality.

Tags have the potential for usage indicator in weeding considerations.
- Most books that have been tagged have been checked out at this point.

Lexis-Nexis will supposedly be having durable URLs in the near future.

PT default is public, but you can designate posts to be private.
- In upcoming version, you can "friend" people to view private posts.

New version will have copyright assignment functionality (Creative Commons/all rights reserved).

When Franklin was redesigned, Subject Headings were moved from the "Detailed View" to the "Basic View" mainly because tags were being displayed in the Basic View.

ACRL - Day Three, Part One

I'm sitting in the room for my first session of Day Four, so I'm not really going to post anything significant right now. Providing my battery and the wireless connection holds out, I will do live blogging of sessions today as I've obviously brought my computer. However, highlights:

• "Keeping Libraries in the Flow" workshop - Interesting. I was the recorder for my table, so I ended up being a little out of the flow of discussion, but as this really seemed to draw more on the academic library day-to-day experience, I was a little out of the flow, anyway. Some very good ideas came out of the session, though.


• "Cyber Zed Shed: Second Life" - This could have easily been a full panel session with demonstration, and probably would have worked better. The presenter did an awesome job for being limited to 15 minutes, but we left with more questions. There was apparently a poster session, too, which I missed.

Oops, session's starting.