Twitter!
Are you twittering yet? What? No!? 
Twitter has gotten A LOT of traction as a new micro-blogging tool as it was utilized by attendees to the SXSW (South by Southwest) music/media tech. conference to keep their friends up to date with their current status and location. Twitter’s approach is very simple. It asks you what you are doing and gives you 140 characters with which to answer. You can post via twitter.com, or by SMS from your cell phone and can see what your friends are up to via the same methods. Twitter officially launched last summer, but it wasn’t until the past few months that it started to receive significant publicity or coverage.
There are a few tools that have already emerged to enhance your twitter experience and usage. Twitterriffic for Macs and a new tool called Twitteroo both allow you to “tweet” directly from your desktop. You can also submit posts via IM, however due to recent explosive growth IM is currently down as they are having touble keeping up. I’m personally using twitter to keep my status up-to-date and is visible in the sidebar of my blog.
If you’re a librarian and are using twitter, I’d really like to share ideas and hear your thoughts. We’re in an era where libraries have access to an almost unlimited set of new tools and resources (many free) to help reach out to our users. Creativity is a must due to all of the “competition”! Feel free to contact me or IM (see homepage)!
I think the best tool to help people best understand twitter is to visit Twittervision, a Google Maps mash up, where you can see submissions from around the world in real time. Hope you can read 精心策劃的乾杯!
And yes, I heard you wondering, twitter is fully RSS capable and compliant! See this article over at Webware for some additional tools and tips.
We Heard an Owl Last Night
Last night was the second time in my life that I recall hearing an owl in the wild. Not that suburban America is “the wild,” but you get my point. Anyway, after listening for a while I was able to determine that it was a Barred Owl (also known as a hoot owl) by researching North American owls online, and sampling a few audio clips (listen below). Special thanks to the Owl Pages for the audio clip and the Wildlife Center of Virgina for the image. I also really like this picture from Wikipedia.
Essay from ACRL - Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries
ACRL has released a report highlighting the changes academic libraries in particular are experiencing due to the changes in the information marketplace and is the result from a meeting held late last year.
“This essay derives from a Roundtable on Technology and Change in Academic Libraries, convened by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) on November 2-3, 2006 in Chicago.”
This essay offers a lot of practical insight into the changes that are happening all around us due to the exponential growth starting with the development of the web, just a little over fifteen, short years ago. It has come to the point that it is no longer feasible for libraries to continue their traditional role as gatekeeper.
“At the same time, however, traditional structures of authority and qualitative certification, which the library embedded both in its own collection and in the scholarly apparatus it supported, have been engulfed in a flood of information from multiple sources, disseminated primarily in digital form, and retrievable by means that the library, and hence the academy, no longer control.”
Have libraries been supplanted by the web? Many of the younger librarians I know regularly visit Wikipedia and are addicted to Google when it comes to locating and consuming content. I think the following paragraph needs to be thoughtfully considered throughout the academic library community as many users are considering their libraries irrelevant to their work.
“Among young people in particular, however, there is a tendency to consider the library as primarily the domain of the book; fewer now regard the library as either a primary source of information or as a means to discover and access knowledge that exists beyond its own physical collection. The recent OCLC report, College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, indicates that most undergraduates either do not visit their campus library or do so only one or two times per year. Librarians and faculty members alike complain that young people too often conceive the research process as beginning and ending with an Internet search. Several have observed that it takes only one dissatisfying experience with a library to solidify a student’s conviction that the Internet provides more efficient, productive, and enjoyable paths to information.”
These are just my initial thoughts and I’ll post more as I am continuing to digest the essay. What are your thoughts?
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/future/changingroles.htm
Scholar Rediscovers Interlibrary Loan Service
An article appeared on the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education last week written by a Fulbright scholar studying at University College Cork in Ireland. While conducting research, she discovered that European libraries and their American counterparts treat interlibrary loan (ILL) service very differently. ILL can sometimes be a costly service, especially to libraries with limited budgets. As the writer points out later in the article, many, if not the majority of academic libraries in the United States often subsidize the cost of ILL service while many international libraries pass the cost along to those requesting items.
ILL is often a scholar’s best friend as it provides access to materials worldwide, and expands a library’s local collection exponentially. ILL service is one of the aspects I appreciate most about my job as the Head of Access and Delivery Services as the users are often very appreciative of being able to access materials at other institutions that would not be available otherwise. The link below goes directly to the article! Enjoy!
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/03/2007031401c/careers.html
BookSwim, like NetFlix, only for books!
A colleague alerted a group of us at work to the launch of BookSwim. Similar to NetFlix, you create an account, add books to your delivery queue, and return them via free shipping when you’re done! The service isn’t quite ready for prime-time, but there’s a general description of the service, a brochure for those wishing to become an investor (don’t lose your chance to get in on the ground floor), and a sign-up area for future notifications as to the availability of service, etc. Interestingly they “love” libraries, and have “no intention” of trying to replace them and offer librarians a way to contact them to further discuss their services. I’ll be curious to see if such a service can survive in today’s saturated book marketplace. Keep in mind that this service will be going up against virtually free book sharing services including Web 2.0 startup BookMooch.com and PaperBackSwap.com.
LibriVox
So you’ve seen all of the free e-book sites that are available and you’ve also visited audible.com to learn about their e-audio book subscription model. Maybe your disappointed with the NetLibrary’s e-audio book model. LibriVox is possibly the best of all of these, at least for works in the public domain. Even better, you can volunteer to “read” and become the voice behind one of the recordings! Talk about the ultimate in community particpation!
Updating…
The time has come and I’m trying to get all of the content from my old university hosted site to AndyMorton.org. Based on my Google Analytics data, I was getting quite a few hits on my previous site, so I’m going to redirect those links to this site via an .htaccess file. It’s interesting to review the content I was linking to, as it was all very web 1.0, including my own site!
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Professional and personal ideas, thoughts, and comments from your favorite tech-brarian. Actually, that's probably not a valid term, but hey, I'm not sweating the small stuff!
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