Recent Articles
Palm’s New Device
May 29, 2007 Internet, Mobile Tech Leave a comment
Will Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, Inc. steal the show at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference that is underway right now in Carlsbad, CA? Palm is set to launch a “new category” of mobile devices tomorrow (11:30am PT/2:30pm ET). There’s been a lot of speculation as to what the device could be. Perhaps an iPhone competitor? Possibly a sidekick killer? Potentially a new converged device running Linux?
Many have written Palm off due to dropping the ball with the Palm OS over the past few years and not moving quickly enough to an updated platform. In the mean time Blackberry and Windows Mobile now dominate the smart phone market, however Treos are holding their own somewhat. Personally, I still use my trusty Palm TX, now two years old, as it has built-in wifi and meets most of my needs. I’m still a smart phone hold out for the as it really frustrates me that device manufacturers (Palm, RIM, etc.) do not include wifi connectivity alongside the cellular radio. This is due in part to the service providers (Verizon, Cingular/ ATT Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint/Nextel, and Alltel) strong arming the hardware makes so that they can gouge the customer for the additional data service and not allow the consumer to use the device at home or work over a wifi network. One stand out however is HTC, a Chinese company that makes a wide variety of devices, offers several models including the 8125 sold by Cingular that include wifi connectivity. So for the mean time, I’ll continue to use my outdated Palm TX as I have both wifi access at home and work which I can use to check email, etc. as needed.
Interlibrary Loan, Visualized…
May 19, 2007 ILL-L, Libraries, UR Libraries Leave a comment
A few months ago a subscriber to ILL-L posted a message about using a paper map in his office to help both library colleagues and customers better understand ILL service by marking the institutions where they borrow from and loan to. I thought this was a great idea and asked the staff in the UR ILL office if they could try something similar, which they did. However, when Google rolled out the new My Maps service as part of Google Maps, I instantly thought about transitioning our paper map to an online version, something we could easily share with the entire UR community to help interlibrary loan service to be better understood, both from a borrowing point of view as well as lending, since both are ILL’s core mission.
Yesterday I met with our ILL staff and showed them the initial map I created. We then reviewed what content to include and how to add it. We decided to include all borrowed and loaned items since January of 2007. Most of the data is now entered, but there’s some that’s still outstanding, but I’m very impressed with the results. Here’s a link to the map (we’re also working on an embedded version that we’ll host locally):
UR Interlibrary Loan - Borrowing and Lending
Let us know what you think!
You got SpiderCard in my Printing Credits…
May 19, 2007 Libraries, UR Libraries Leave a comment
Yes, just as popular as those delicious peanut butter cups, printing credits are heavily consumed by most UR students! Thanks to staff in UR’s networking group, they will soon be able to purchase printing credits online using funds from their SpiderCard, which has been a long requested feature. It will be a very easy process as a student will only need to login to their account on BannerWeb, where they will see the option to add printing credits. In case their SpiderCard balance is too low, they have the option to add funds to their Spidercard account from a credit/debit card, or electronic check before making the purchase.
Up until now students have only been able to purchase printing credits at Boatwright Library’s Main Service Desk, which over the past few years has grown to be one of the busiest services (in conjunction with laptop circulation) the library offers. Last fall semester alone, we collected over $13,000, just from printing! For the foreseeable future we’ll continue to allow students to make cash purchases, but will probably cap it at a low amount for those emergency printing situations. This is an exciting new service, both for library staff and our students!
BibMe.com!
May 15, 2007 Libraries Leave a comment
Surprise, another web 2.0 tool for students! Seriously, this actually looks very useful and handy. BibMe.com allows users to create bibliographies by searching internal databases of books, magazines, journals, websites, newspapers, etc. Initially I find the search feature to be limited and they are pulling their articles from FindArticles.com, which is certainly not going to meet the information needs of today’s college students and other researchers. However, I fully appreciate that it’s free and that it offers manual entry of bibliographic data allowing you to complete a bibliography. It’s also very simple to use and straitforward.
In comparison, NoodleBib is another tool geared toward students and offers much more in-depth tools and features and uses a wizard to help build each citation. Unfortunately I can see a student who’s expecting something fast and easy to get easily bogged down and frustrated. At my university, NoobleBib has been well received by our students which is a great thing and is hopefully improving their ability to identify sound resources for their work, but I can see the simplicity of BibMe and other freely available competitors to be an enticement for switching.
Updates!
May 10, 2007 Personal Leave a comment
Wow, so much has happened both personally and professionally over the past few weeks! I’ll be covering them in soon in new blog posts. In the mean time, the Pew Internet and American Life Project told me that I’m an omnivore :lol: , which I guess is a good thing… Anyway, you can see my results here, and be sure to take the survey yourself!
Two Old Friends @ CIL2007
Apr 17, 2007 Internet Leave a comment
It was fun to catch up with Keith Weimer, who just moved to UVa. Ronald was more than happy to pose for us as he didn’t really have anything else going on!
CIL 2007
Apr 17, 2007 CIL2007, Personal Leave a comment
I am currently in Arlington, Virgina attending the Computers in Libraries Conference. It is in it’s 22 year and has the most attendees this year than any previous conference. So far most of the sessions have been interesting, and a few inspiring! Regardless, all of this is tainted by the events yesterday at Virginia Tech. I know a few librarians who work there and read in a report from the Roanoke Times that Newman Library became a temporary shelter while the campus was on lock down and can only imagine the worry and fear everyone was experiencing. My heart, thoughts, and prayers go out to everyone involved and the families who have been affected by this senseless tragedy.
EMI goes DRM-Free!
Apr 2, 2007 Internet Leave a comment
Wow, the DRM camp just took a huge hit and Apple is finally putting their money where their mouth is:
“…EMI Music is launching DRM-free superior quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire and that Apple’s iTunes Store will be the first online music store to sell EMI’s new downloads.”
I’m really excited about this 
as it’s a win for us, the consumers. DRM has only complicated life for legitimate customers who may have purchased music thinking it would play on their portable player, and then learned it wouldn’t. It’s often been said that the only people who are kept in check by DRM are legitimate consumers, who legally purchase their music. Pirates are ALWAYS going to find ways around the technology, just search your favorite bittorrent site and look for the cracked video files, etc.
This is exciting news and I’m hopeful that the other major labels will soon follow suit! Here’s the EMI press release.
Twitter!
Mar 28, 2007 Internet, Mobile Tech Leave a comment
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
Mar 23, 2007 Family, Personal Leave a comment
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.
