New UR Libraries Beta Website
June 19, 2009
This week we announced the public preview of our new website. We also posted a link to the current site alerting visitors to visit the new site and give it a test drive. This project has been a collaboration between staff from the library, the UR communications office and web development group. It officially began with our first planning meeting in October 2008, and we’re very happy to be at this point. The key features we’re implementing include a persistent search box which is in the site header allowing users to search our resources (catalog, journal subscriptions, databases, research and course guides, and site) from any page they happen to be on. Beside the search box is a link to launch a pop-up chat window allowing the user to continue using our site while getting live assistance. There’s also a standard navigation bar which is part of the header allowing for consistent navigation from every page on the site. We still have much to do and numerous refinements to add but I believe we’re off to a great start. Another part of the redesign is our transition to UR’s new content management system, Cascade Server from Hannon Hill. It’s a major improvement over our current CMS. It creates very clean code and is much more flexible for future changes and development.
We have also licensed LibGuides from Springshare for our subject/major and course specific guides. LibGuides is a hosted service and lets you build incredibly focused guides for your users. There are some libraries that use LibGuides to host their entire website, which shows you how flexible the product is. LibGuides is also easily customized by using custom cascading style sheets and we’ve been able to apply our new site’s template so that it fully blends with the rest of our new site.
You can preview our beta site at http://xlibrary.richmond.edu and I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions! The site will stay in beta until early August when we’ll retire the current site.
Does Technology Make Us Happier?
May 23, 2009
A few months ago comedian Louis C.K. appeared on the Late Show with Conan O’Brien and shared his thoughts on the numerous technological wonders we all take for granted. Watch this clip and decide for yourself, does technology make you happier or leave you frustrated?
Moo Minicards For Your Library
March 5, 2009
During the fall semester I created a Flickr account for our library to host photos of the library as well as pictures taken at our various events throughout the year. When I received approval to purchase a Flickr Pro account, we were offered 10 free MiniCards from Moo.com, a Flickr partner located in the UK. Moo is an online printing service and will put your photos on about anything you desire. One of their more popular products are their MiniCards. They are smaller than a business card, but large enough to display a photo on one side, and custom text on the other. I decided to create some sample cards to advertise our library contact information, website and catalog. After sharing the samples with various groups, we ordered a set of 100 MiniCards. We placed them on our Main Service Desk along with our staff business cards. We set them out in mid-January and they quickly disappeared over the course of a few weeks. Are they necessary for the library to function? No. Will our students and faculty forget about us? No. Can they remind interested users how to get in touch with us as well as generate lots of “good will?” Absolutely! Below are photos of the front and back of our cards. A set of 100 MiniCards only costs $19.99 plus a small amount for shipping.
Improv Everywhere Strikes Again
February 11, 2009
If you haven’t seen any of Improv Everywhere’s “work” then you’re missing out. Their missions (their term, not mine) focus on bringing a bit of randomness and peculiarity to mundane situations. That’s where it gets fun. Often people don’t quite know how to react, but it always seems to bring them out of their comfort zone, which leaves them open to actually connecting with other human beings. That’s exactly what happens in this new video. Here’s the background: this is a very busy subway hub in New York, so you can imagine the attitudes during morning rush-hour. However something happens that completely changes the entire experience and possibly the rest of their day. It’s interesting to watch all of the smiles break out on the commuters’ faces as a completely random, but uniquely human experience happens to them. It breaks their focus on the day’s problems they’re probably already stressing over. Watch the video below or read more about the mission!
Webtools and Possibilties
November 5, 2008
I came across yet another “upload your photo and have fun with it” site the other day, but found this one to be quite good at manipulating the image and making it “fit” with the intended placement. The effects are nice and entertaining. Anyway, it’s just another example of how the internet is replacing the desktop as the preferred place for applications, etc. That said, It’ll be a long time before I give up Picassa for photo organizing and management of pictures of our family and kids!
The site is http://photofunia.com. Oh, and you haven’t seen Yearbook Yourself yet, you should probably stop by there first!
I made three photos with Photofunia, and here’s the full set.
My Wordle
November 2, 2008
Robert Frost’s poetry has long spoken to me, especially “Stopping by Woods…” Thanks to a heads-up from friends Eric Palmer and Tom Woodward, I’ve used Wordle to create a word cloud with appropriate coloring:
Click the image for full size and visit Wikipedia’s entry on this poem to learn more about it…
LITA 2008 - 5 Minute Madness Videos Online
October 21, 2008
I attended LITA 2008 which started on Oct. 17 and finished this past Sunday (Oct. 19). One of my favorite sessions was the 5 Minute Madness presentation on Saturday morning. Each presenter was restricted to 5 minutes to discuss a topic of their choosing with as many slides as they could squeeze in. I had originally planned on video recording my former co-worker Keith Weimer, but decided to capture the whole session due to the broad range of topics. I’ve processed the videos and have uploaded them to a YouTube playlist. I’m embedding the full playlist below but will also link directly to the list on YouTube. There are a lot of good sessions, so take a few minutes and watch some of the clips. You can also head over to the Eclectic Librarian for some brief coverage of each topic.
Full embedded playlist (mouse over to move between clips):
or:
Playlist - http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A1F2683346CC7224
iPhone & Flip Mino Package Comparison
October 7, 2008
I ordered two Flip Video Minos as part of this year’s equipment requests for work. I want our group to experiment with them in making tutorials, video blogs, etc. to help promote the library’s services and collections. After receiving the first one, I instantly recognized the packaging, and it had Apple written all over it down to the black matte finish on the box. Even after taking the Flip out of its sleeve you’re presented with a flip-open box which elegantly holds the device. Apple’s impact is far and wide…
Jim Rettig’s Travel Schedule for 2008/2009
May 21, 2008
My director, Jim Rettig, is currently the President-elect of the American Library Association. I had the idea of creating a mashup of his travel itinerary for the year to help the library community visualize where he’ll be appearing over the course of the next year. The result is below.
Here’s a link to the full version on Google Maps: http://snurl.com/29z6i
To accomplish this, I created a dedicated calendar in Google Calendar, fed the xml data from the calendar into a custom Yahoo! Pipe, and then exported the KML data back to Google Maps.
Props to the team at Lifehacker for picking up on a post of how to do this!
TechTips Blog
April 25, 2008
So a few weeks ago, I began distributing tech tips every Friday afternoon to our library staff via our internal mailing list. My goal in doing this is to share some of the more helpful web services and tools that I come across on a regular basis. Recently my director asked me to approach our VP for IS (we’re part of our campus IS group) to see if this would be something of value to the rest of IS. She gave approval and also thinks this is a good idea to try. She also suggested using a blog for archival purposes. Working with our Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, I now have another blog installed on their WordPress MU platform. I will continue to distribute tips via email, but will simultaneously post them to the blog for wider distribution and archiving. Your comments and feedback are welcomed! I may also aggregate them here for further coverage.
