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This is just an awesome story. During World War II, the Army asked six women to program ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer (more info about ENIAC here, here, and here). According to the news article, these women were not recognized for their work until now. I can’t wait to see the documentary about these women.
Peter Brantley recently sent an announcement through the DLF-ANNOUNCE list saying that Zotero and the Internet Archive have formed a partnership to encourage online storage of scholarly materials into a “Zotero Commons” and to allow for scholarly collaboration, among other things. Read more here.
Zotero has been on my “trythis” list for some time now, so I decided to go ahead and try it out. Wow! I wish I would have had something like this during college.
As I am searching in my library catalog, many of the library databases, and on the internet, I can save articles, books, and sites in Zotero by simply clicking a document icon that appears in the URL field of my browser window. Then, to view, organize, and tag my saved items, I click the “Zotero” icon that appears in my browser’s status bar, which produces an extra window pane at the bottom of the browser window. Then, when I have all my articles, books, websites, etc. organized, I can export them to create a bibliography in a quite a few citation styles and file formats.
Oh, yeah, and it’s FREE!
You can download Zotero here and view two brief tutorials here to see an overview and a demonstration.
I’ve now been pondering ways I can use this, aside from the intended purpose of scholarly research.
1) Database presentations – When I present on particular databases, I often end up bookmarking vendors sites with information, title lists, training materials, and other items related to that database, so now I could keep track of all that in one labeled Zotero folder instead of my spreadsheets and bookmarks.
2) Reading lists – Since I can bookmark items from Amazon and WorldCat.org (and some databases, too), I could start building reading lists that could easily be exported as bibliographies to share with anyone.
3) Genealogy research – You can save images and files as attachments when you save a record. I haven’t tested this with some of the genealogy databases yet, but it might help to keep track of all the family records and local histories.
Hmmm…I know there could be quite a few more creative uses. If you can think of anything, please share your ideas!
I just took a look at SortFix. It’s a simple, Google-style search box, but the neat part is that once you run a search you can choose more terms to add to your search or terms to exclude by dragging and dropping suggested search phrases into a series of boxes labeled “Add to Search” and “Remove.” I tried a search and then tried a couple of additional searches by adding and excluding their suggested phrases, and it worked nicely.
The About Us page indicates that they also intend to help build search skills. I have to say, I think being able to move suggested phrases around to refine your search is a great tool. I would love to try this with a school project to see how kids react to it. It would be fun to run a search and then experiment with adding and excluding search phrases to see what happens. If someone out there gets a chance to do that, please let me know!
found via LISNews
I used to have a nice MySpace layout – one of those free ones someone else was kind enough to create. Well, it suddenly disappeared, leaving my MySpace profile looking a little sad. I tried to find another free layout – and there are plenty of places to find MySpace layouts online (yep, just Google “MySpace layouts”), but I wanted a layout with nice colors and no large image in the background. I found several plain layouts with no images, but I didn’t like any of the colors.
But, I did find a MySpace layout generator that lets you pick your own image and colors. YAY, I say, but now what colors do I choose?
Oh, wait! I remember that I had previously bookmarked a color scheme generator (love those!!). I was able to pick out several shades of purple that coordinated nicely. Oh, dear…the layout generator requires RGB values, but the scheme generator only gives the hexidecimal values!
Determined not to be derailed from my project, I googled again and found a nice Hex-to-RGB converter. YAY!
So, after taking several steps and going the long way around to do it, I finally updated the layout for my MySpace profile. Of course, the next day I found this site with RGB codes and hexidecimal values. That would have been easier. Ah, well…live and learn.
Google Reader recently added some updates – most of which I have appreciated so far. One update is that it now makes recommendations based on your current feed subscriptions and your Google web history. Read more about it in this article.
I mostly read library, education, and technology feeds (and combinations of those three subjects). So, Google Reader recommended these to me today.
Clicking on the View All link gives a longer list with number of subscribers to gauge popularity, and – best of all – the number of posts per week. I have to confess that I have unsubscribed to a couple of feeds simply because I couldn’t keep up with the number of posts.
Now, I appreciate the recommendations, but this brings up the privacy question. So, how much does Google know about me…and the scarier part, how much is it sharing about me?
Of course, I also have to confess that I subscribed to several feeds that were recommended because they were from blogs that interested me. Google has lured me in with tantalizing (and scarily spot-on) recommendations. But, is Google evil? How long do I continue to trade privacy for customized services?
I read a lot of news, blogs, and discussion lists, but I don’t always have time to read some of the great stuff that is out there. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this problem. So, when I found this extension, I was glad to have something to help!
Read it Later is a Firefox extension that allows you to easily mark any website – a news article, a blog entry, a page with several links you want to visit, etc. – as something to read later.
The extension works by placing two buttons in your browser window that look like this (for me anyway):
To save a site, just click the first button, and it will look like this:
When you finally find time to catch up on reading your articles (if you ever do!), just click the second button for your list of saved items:
After you have read something, just click the first button again to remove it from the list.
IdeaShower has also created a nice YouTube video to show this as well. The buttons are different from mine, but it works the same way.
Updated 12/27/07: IdeaShower released a new update for this extension. I downloaded it, and it still kept the items I had already saved.
First of all, the GovGab blog was started around the end of September for this year, and I have found it to be full of interesting tidbits about government resources. It’s certainly worth checking out if you haven’t already.
Now, back to the point of this post, Marybeth writes about the benefits of using her local public library. She notes that she can save money and reduce clutter in her home by using her library. And she also points out that the library’s best resource is – drum roll, please – the librarians!
Thanks for the appreciation, Marybeth!
My apologies to anyone, possibly all two of you, that have been kind enough to read my blog. After August, the busiest part of the semester hit and lasted for several months, and I couldn’t find time to keep up with reading and news, much less blogging. I was also struggling with whether or not to even continue this blog. It does take a lot of time and energy, but I felt I had a good vision for what it could be. So, I’ve been pondering the direction of where to go with it.
My original intent of the blog was to provide how-to’s and tips related to technologies we are using in libraries to educate users and provide access – with a little related tech news thrown in. I realized I wasn’t doing this as well as I wanted. However, I think I now have more clarity about what I want to do. I am also still working to find my voice with blogging, so I feel I shouldn’t stop now.
So, here’s where I think I should go. I want to do reviews of browser tools and add-ons, social networking tools, educational technology tools, etc. For example, I recently downloaded this great Firefox extension called Read it Later, and I want to tell people about it because I think it would make life easier. I also am pondering a project to create subject guides using NetVibes or PageFlakes, but I am still thinking about how to organize those. I also want to do database tips – search tips, fun features, etc. – in library databases. This blog would actually be a bit Georgia-centric, but my intent is to include things that are – or could be – used in many libraries. I’m setting a goal of one or two postings a week – I mean, we all need goals in life, right? – at least I do to push myself a bit.
Well, what do y’all – or maybe singular you? – think? If anyone is actually still reading, please comment or send me an email at learninglibtech@gmail.com. I’d like to hear any ideas and feedback.
WikiScanner Identifies Editors on Wikipedia
http://mashable.com/2007/08/14/wikiscanner/
WikiScanner, which is discussed in the article mentioned above, is a new site that allows anyone to see who is editing what on Wikipedia. It is interesting enough by itself to ponder the potential uses and abuses for this tool, but the New York Times recently published an article on what has actually been discovered through it. It seems most of the “obviously self-interested” edits have come from users in corporate networks.
Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/technology/19wikipedia.html
So, I guess the moral of the story is what we’ve been saying all along…be careful with information found on Wikipedia. I think it also strengthens the larger argument for the need to evaluate sources of information in the digital age. Where are you getting information? Who did it come from?
Update: A blog post about this
America’s Most Literate Cities, 2006
http://www.ccsu.edu/amlc06/
Woo-hoo! Atlanta is tied with Washington, D.C. for 3rd/4th place!
found via the Publib list
Update 1/2/08: Jack Miller posted an updated list in December of 2007. ATL fell to 8th on the list. It’s funny how you can fall so far so fast. What’s up with that?
