jandawson.net * librarianing

I wasn’t able to attend Internet Librarian 2010, but was asked to make a video for Tuesday’s Failcamp session. Wish I could have been there! Tweets indicated it was amazing, as usual!

A heartfelt thanks to Jane Dysart, Amy Buckland, and Sarah Houghton-Jan for allowing me to participate remotely. Also, thank you to my co-presenters Char Booth and Krista Godfrey for being so awesome!

May all your fails become WINs

Posted in conference, cool, emerging technology, information, information professionals, internet, librarians, libraries, libraries and education, library, Library and information studies, library technology, reference, voip
Tags: ask ontario, failcamp, il2010, information, information professionals, internet, internet librarian 2010, knowledge ontario, libraries, Library and information studies, reference, virtual reference, voip

Posted in cool, emerging technology, information, information professionals, information retrieval, internet, librarians, libraries, Library and information studies, library technology, reference, research, technology, virtual reference, web 2.0, web 3.0
Tags: 2.0, ask ontario, connect ontario, emerging technology, equal access, information professionals, knowledge ontario, learn ontario, librarians, library, Library and information studies, ontario, our ontario, portal, reference, resource ontario, virtual reference, web 2.0, web 3.0, web2.you

Fiacre O’Duinn: Augmented Reality

• examples:

  • Layar: most importantly, it has a Tim Hortons locator. haha.

  • StreetMuseum: launched May 2010. part of a marketing strategy for museums in London.

• Challenges:

  • physical space: we need to think architecturally about augmented reality. the understanding of “place” is different for everyone

  • social/cultural aspects

  • technological infrastructure

• the way forward: we have to deal with the problematic concept of a single reality when we say augmented reality. there is no one reality, there are many.

Brandon Weigel: Reference from the Street

• renegade reference on the streets of TO for a great cause: the Stephen Lewis Foundation

• most people didn’t know what “reference” meant.

• had to advertise with signs saying “ask a question”, “free answers”, etc.iphone proved useful for tethering technology and a roving reference desk

Sally Wilson: QR Code

• QR codes are codes in vertical and horizontal coding. “Quick Response”. just one example of a 2D bar code. Other types of 2D codes are Aztec; Lifescan; etc.

• advantage is that you can store a large amounts of data

• here are some QR readers: http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code-software/

• Libraries use QR codes

  • University of Bath uses QR codes in their catalogue for bibliographic info

  • University of Huddersfield uses QR codes on their current periodicals for holdings info

  • University of Amsterdam uses QR codes on business cards

  • Ryerson uses QR codes on bookmarks which link to ebooks

• how to create QR codes:

  • Kaywa

  • Beetag

• Down sides

  • people don’t know what they are

  • need phone with a camera

  • install software

  • linking to website that isn’t mobile friendly

Amanda Etches-Johnson: Designing for Mobile

• size: your interface needs to work on a variety of phones from dumb to smart

• bandwidth: low latency is the key to a good mobile experience

• data plans: we don’t have unlimited plans in Canada. pick the most essential stuff so you don’t hog your users data allowance.

• mobile UX: user experience. the emotional aspect of your service/product. people are starting to realize that it’s not about miniature views of sites, but usability

• keep design and functionality simpleclickability is very important for small touch interfaces. don’t just use hyperlinked words, use thumbnails and graphics.

• save keystrokes. we’re used to autocomplete, type ahead, etc. everywhere else, so do it here too.prototype. pen and paper!test and test and test

Posted in conference, futurism, information, internet, librarians, libraries
Tags: #olita, conference, digital odyssey, emerging technology, information, information professionals, librarians, libraries, Library and information studies, technology

It’s Griffey’s first time in Canada! Welcome!

• stats…

  • 4.1 billion people have a cell phone

  • 2.4 billion people use cell phones for texting. texting is by far the most used communication method

• trends…

  • most of these phones are currently  “dumb phones”

  • by 2011, most phones will be smart phones

  • Nokia largest global manufacturer of smartphones 2009

  • before the iPad launched in Canada, there were over 6000 already in use in Canada

  • Canada only has a 67% cell phone penetration rate, while Ireland has a 120% cell phone penetration rate. The US is at 91%

  • MIFI from Sprint and Verison. 3 credit cards thick. Be your own portable hot spot. About $100 in US.

  • Notionink (same peops that made XO “One laptop per Child” ) Cool screen technology for use in sun, etc.

  • Verizon is interested in working with Google and leveraging Chrome as a web based operating system

  • 2 million ipads sold in 60 days!

  • new iphone 4 has a gyroscope in it: to tell where in “space” it is.

• future…

  • Gibson quote: “the future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed”

  • in five years, the iphone is going to be “in cereal boxes”, so accessible

  • 4G technology = WiMax & LTE

    • 3G gets about 5MB/sec downloading

    • LTE STARTS at 100MB/sec “like walking around with an ethernet cord in your pocket”

  • flip scanning for books: 200 pages a minute by flipping through the book. researcher was asked where he saw it going, he said “it’s going to be a cell phone”. how does this change the library world? walk in, sit down, rip a book, walk out with it!

  • Google goggles: take a picture of something and Google figures out what it is you’re looking at by object recognition, then search, then results return. leverage this into the Google translation device: take a picture of a different language, and get a translation result. combine THAT with flip scanning! woah.

  • Clay Shirky: “technology doesn’t become socially interesting until it becomes technologically boring”

• issues…

  • privacy, bien sur!

  • DRM (Digital Rights Management)

For more and for slides, etc.: www.delicious.com/griffey/olita

Posted in conference, emerging technology, futurism, information, information professionals, internet, librarians, libraries, mobile technology, technology
Tags: #olita, conference, digital odyssey, emerging technology, information, information professionals, librarians, libraries, mobile, mobile technology, technology

askON CALL CiL prez

Posted in conference, emerging technology, information, information professionals, librarians, libraries, library, Library and information studies, library technology, virtual reference, voip
Tags: chat, cil2010, information professionals, internet, librarians, libraries, Library and information studies, reference, technology, virtual reference, voice, voip

Presented By Joan Goodbody and Laura Hjerpe

1. Human Powered Search
Using human intervention.

• OAIster
• citeulike
• Onlinebooks
• LibraryThing

Human Powered + Social Web = Real Time Search

• yauba

2. Semantic Search
works best with deep web to get best results.

• sensebot
• wolfram|alpha
• bing
• cognition

3. Federated Search

• Scirus
• DeepWeb
• Science Research.com
• Mednar
• Biznar
• WorldWideScience
• Science Accelerator

4. Vertical Search
Domain-specific search, part of a larger sub-grouping known as “specialized” search. Some overlap with Federated search.

• Truevert

Posted in conference, emerging technology, information, information professionals, information retrieval, internet, librarians, libraries, library, library 2.0, Library and information studies, reference, research, Science information, semantic web, technology, virtual reference, web 2.0, web 3.0
Tags: cil2010, computers in libraries conference, information professionals, librarians, libraries, library, Library and information studies, reference, reference resources, resources, search engine, searching, virtual reference, web 2.0

Presented by Mary Ellen Bates of Bates Information Services at BatesInfo.com

1. Newsy.com:
The Week meets YouTube. Human editors summarize the news. One-sentence summary.

2. Google Buzz:
Access via Gmail. Has Google stars. Rudimentary search. No date sort of results. Includes other social media sources.

3. Buzzzy.com:
Searches Google Buss plus other social media. Results are chronological. Limit by language.

4. Factery.net:
Searches Yahoo Boss and Twitter. Ranks by FactRank and includes tweeted urls. SERP has facts, not extracts.

5. Technorati:
Authority search is GREAT! Search by blog title or post. Shows hottest posts in various channels.

6. SlideFinder.net:
Search tool for searching slide decks. Crawls through content in PPT pages. Search for words in the notes. Add-in lets you search while in PowerPoint.

7. World Govt Data:
Compiled by The Guardian. Focus on gov data sources US, UK, Australia, NZ. Downloadable data sets.

8. Factual.com:
Like Wolfram|Alpha, but as a wiki. Now primarily Wikipedia content.

9. Twitter lists
Create and publish an RSS on your faves. Can see whose list a user is on. Like a “super follow”.

10. Listorious.com:
Spiders public Twitter lists. Find lists on a topic. ID experts.

Slide deck at Batesinfo.com/extras

Posted in conference, emerging technology, information, librarians, libraries, libraries and education, library, library 2.0, Library and information studies, reference, virtual reference, web 2.0, web 3.0
Tags: cil2010, computers in libraries, conference, information professionals, librarian, librarians, library, Library and information studies, library conference, reference, virtual reference, web 2.0, web 3.0

I’m here in sunny Crystal City, Arlington Virginia! CiL 2010 is off to an incredible start. People keep knocking my socks off by their friendliness and special knowledge in so many facets of librarianship.

Posted in blogging, conference, emerging technology, information, information professionals, information retrieval, internet, librarians, libraries, libraries and education, library, library 2.0, Library and information studies, library technology, virtual reference, voip, web, web 2.0, web 3.0
Tags: cil2010, computers in libraries, conference, innovation, librarian, librarianship, library

Not a lot has been written about inappropriate behaviour in virtual reference. The askON service only receives about 6% inappropriate behaviour in the public sector. There is only 1% in the academic sector.

askON has visitor and staff policies and protocol for inappropriate behaviour, but we are interested in developing further training for best practices in identifying and managing visitor behaviours that run the gamut between silly and abusive.

Posted in information, information professionals, librarians, libraries, virtual reference
Tags: best practices, inappropriate behaviour, information, librarians, libraries, technology, virtual reference