Reference Services

CNN released an article yesterday, 10 Web trends to watch in 2010, that lists the top trends for the coming year. First on the list was the importance of real-time communcations:

Real-time ramps up



Sparked by Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, the real-time trend has been to the latter part of 2009 what "Web 2.0" was to 2007. The term represents the growing demand for immediacy in our interactions. Immediacy is compelling, engaging, highly addictive ... it's a sense of living in the now.

Other trends on the list from the article include "Content Curation" (I like this term. We librarians are Content Curators!):

The Web's biggest challenge of recent years is that content creation is outpacing our ability to consume it: "Information overload" has become an increasingly common complaint.

Another interesting trend talked about is "Augmented reality" where we will be able to overlay pictures with information. One product talked about was Layer which allows you to take a picture from your video camera and then it will take information from various other tools such as Wikipedia, Yelp and Twitter and overlay it with information about the images being viewed. I see so many opportunities for use with libraries for something like this from location tools, video maps of the library, to identifying a credible resource.

Library 2.0 has started to take foot in many libraries and librarians have found a lot of ways to connect and engage with users. I think this will continue through 2010 and there will more tools to allow us to connect and engage.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new WolframAlpha Search Engine was finally unveiled this weekend after many months of talk. From the creator of Mathematica, a computational software program used by thousands of engineers and mathematicians.

There has been a lot of talk about what the site has been claiming to do. No so much a replacement for current search engines out there such as Google, Yahoo, or Live.com, but a compliment to them. It is a computational search engine that is suppose to take your query and bring back an answer on a results page and then to make that data useable in one of many formats. TechCrunch provides some links to sites with reviews and descriptions.

So I have been trying it out this morning. At first I was using querries directly from real chat sessions to see how it compared to information provided from the librarians in the chat sessions. So far, Wolfram Alpha hasn't really provided anything useful, much less specific to information I was seeking. Take, for instance, the example above. I tried to find information about "floating docks" (the kind used on lakes and ponds). The phrase was not even recognizable. Neither was "dock" when I tried to search for that on its own. Another example was looking for information about the type of government for the country Tanzania. It was able to give me all types of information about Tanzania except about the government. The data components provided in the search results are a bit confusing at the moment as well. I'm going to need to read more one their capabilities and functions.

Right now, this is making me appreciate the other search engines more because of the multiple options they provide in their search results. As a librarian, I like having many options I can review, weigh and disseminate. My vote is not cast yet on Wolfram Alpha. This is just my initial reaction and attempts at playing around with it. I'll play some more!

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't completely scoured through this post but so far I like what I'm seeing. This will come in handy when I'm in a chat session and need to pull up a website fast:

100 Useful Tips and Tools to Research the Deep Web
or
http://tinyurl.com/5wqyng

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mosio is offering informational webinar sessions on their Text a Librarian product. Interested? Check out their sign up page here.

Text a Librarian is a very simple to understand product. Anyone that has ever used text messaging for any purpose will be able to figure out how this works. Patrons are able to ask questions via text to your Ask a Librarian service. The librarian end is all web-based. Librarians receive in requests and respond via the secure Text a Librarian account where there are also able to manage questions and perform other simple admin functions.

If you've been thinking about adding a texting option to your suite of tools/access points for your Ask a Librarian service you will definitely want to learn more about this product.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am just starting to explore the new (beta) Google Chrome. Of course, I like to dive in to (most) new tools, gadgets, and digi toys w/o reading the instructions. I want to explore and discover and see how intuitive the ease of use is first and then I'll read more about it to understand full capability and extras I wasn't able to discover on my own.

Remember in the 5th grade when everyone was given a piece of paper with instructions on it and the teacher told you to read the whole thing first and then go back and begin doing what the instructions said? Shortly after distributing the paper, you heard people clapping, barking, and basically making fools of themselves as they read through the instructions and did what it said. Then you got to the end and it said something like, "Don't do any of the above, this was just a test". I think it's just human nature to do first and then read instructions.

So this is what I'm doing with Google Chrome but I've already got questions and am trying to go back and find the answers and not finding them. Before I get into my questions, I'll go over my initial discoveries and likes:

-Hey! They've combined the search field and the url field in one box!!! Wow! that's so cool. I can search for something or enter a url and it will begin adding search string suggestions as I go along for either.

-It automatically imports my bookmarks and favorites upon download. Very convenient.

-Like the new font look. Different, refreshing (but I'm such this will fade soon enough).

-Be like spy! I can click on "New Incognito Window" which will open a new window that I can search/view pages and it won't appear in my browser history or search history and it won't leave cookies or other traces of me behind. Sweet!

-Pages load super fast! Not sure if this is Google Chrome or the fact that I'm playing around with this at 7am and there's not much traffic at this hour. But Google does say in their cartoonized About section (Note: we should all take a lesson from Google on how to put together an engaging About section!) that it is suppose to increase speed of pages.

Now some questions:

-Where is the home button? How do I add a home button to the tool bar?

-For that matter how do I customize my tool bar? Arrange bookmarks, add plugins and tool bar buttons as well as much more? Google Chrome has really streamlined their tool bar section, I think I'm too spoiled with Firefox in this regard. I like playing with my tool bar and adding/deleting things that are conveniently one click away like my Delicious tags. Haven't found where I can add this yet.

-Why do tabs of pages I'm viewing have to go away when I create a an application shortcut? Note: need to read more about why creating application shortcuts are useful and what they all can do.

That's all for now. I still need to explore this further but I like having the option of another browser like this. It's definitely a step forward in design, architecture, and usability.

Hey, if you're interested in more info about Google Tools, Little Green Bar has a great write up on Amazing Google Tools that is well worth the time to read - even before you dive into them w/o reading the instructions!

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From MCTC:

The Minneapolis Community and Technical College Library has launched a
half-hour long radio show on BlogTalkRadio. Listen to our inaugural
show at:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/MCTC-Library

We discuss incorporating humor in teaching and learning with Craig
Hergert, MCTC English faculty member and part-time stand-up comedian.

Our show "airs" live every two weeks from 11-11:30 a.m. on Friday
mornings. Our next live show is Friday May 16. Or,
you can listen to the archived shows at the above link anytime after the
live show ends.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

New webinar about NetLibrary from OCLC:
The "Using eBooks" session is a free, 60-minute web-based session for an overview and demonstration of NetLibrary and how users can get the most from your library's eBook collection. Topics will include: getting started, creating end-user accounts, searching for titles, copying and pasting text, printing pages, adding notes, saving titles to a favorites list, plus other features and functions. The session will also review the essential resources available to help your users access NetLibrary eBooks with ease.

Registration is available here: http://www.oclc.org/support/training/netlibrary/successlive/default.htm

Personally, I love using NetLibrary. I think it's an untapped gold mine not only of resources by of organizing books and the content in books for leisure and research. People are always amazed at the capabilities within NetLibrary whenever I talk about it in webinars. Now get the info straight from the source.

I have thought of a couple of updates I would like to see integrated into NetLibrary to make them more appealling to the general population: 1. When saving a book to your personal account have an amazon.com-like feature of "...other people who have saved this book also saved these books..." and 2. Allow us to contribute and share content kind of like LibraryThing or looking at a way to connect it to outside content such as author info like Open Library.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On the MINITEX Reference Blog, Kristen Mastel talks about a recent article in C&RL News about a photo campaign UVM Libraries held with students engaging them in a contest that also highlighted the library services, specifically the Ask A library service.
Here are some links to more information about the project:
Link to the article online: http://www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2008/april08/partyphoto.cfm
Link to podcast discussion with the authors and UVM student: http://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/2008/04/04/acrl-podcast-party-photo-phenomenon/
Link to the UVM Flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uvmlibraries/sets

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's a couple of interesting posts I ran across today I thought I'd share. One from Chronicle of Higher Ed talks about Blogs May Be Obsolete by New Technology. It cites:

New sites are cropping up, such as the recently-opened beta of Shyfter, which allow users to not only share their feeds, but also discuss specific posts in one place.

Another post I ran across today I wanted to share is from TechSurfBlog. I today's post the author talks about Blogging Less, Twittering More. An interesting look at what may be a larger trend as people find blogging to take up a lot of time and twittering to, maybe, fill in the holes.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been over a year in development but Adobe has finally released a long anticipated free, web-based version of it's popular software, Photoshop called Photoshop Express: https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html. Sill in beta, it's a one-click editing tool that let's the user resize, crop, red eye correction, touch up, and more. They offer users storage of up to 2GB free with a maximum pixel size per photo of 4000. Plus, it integrated with many photo-sharing websites such as Photobucket, Facebook, and Google's Picasa, but not (yet) Flickr.

Other free, web-based online image editors are Picnik and FotoFlexer.

These are all great tools to help libraries using social networking sites where they can upload photos for sharing among other many other benefits including online publishing, printing, brochures, and event promotions.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sponsored by the 7 multitype library organizations in Minnesota, "23 Things on a Stick: A Library Learning 2.0 Program" will be launched on January 20, 2008. Staff, trustees, and Friends in all types of libraries across the entire state of Minnesota are invited to participate. This is a 12 week self-paced, self-directed program designed to get staff involved in learning and using web 2.0 tools such as Flickr, blogs, RSS, wikis, and other useful, interesting, and intriquing tools. Anyone that registers for the program by Feb. 15 and completes all 23 Things by April 13 will receive a gift for completion and be eligible to win other cool prizes.

If you want to read more about this learning program check out the news post on SELCO/SELS website and look for a more indepth article in the January issue of MINITEX Reference Notes.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To all MLA Members:
MN SLA Library 2.0

After hearing Michael Stephen’s lecture on Library 2.0: Trends and Technologies, several SLA members and I decided it was something we wanted to explore. We decided to use the 9 Week Learning 2.0 plan developed by Helene Blowers of PLCMC as a tool to explore the technologies in an informal group. Every week, starting in January and concluding in March, we will learn about a new technology/tool. Every couple of weeks we’ll get together to brainstorm these technologies and how they could be used in Special Libraries. I’ve created a blog that discusses this program in more detail: http://mnslalibrary20.blogspot.com

Please fill out my 3 question survey after viewing the blog: http://tinyurl.com/2uvsuw

Thanks! Feel free to email me at kathy.degenhardt@target.com with any questions or comments about this program.

Kathy Degenhardt

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you will be at ALA Midwinter in January there is a session on Saturday, Jan. 12 I highly encourage you to rearrange your schedules to attend. The speaker, Aaron Swartz, is leading the Open Library project, which is something I wrote about in a previous post (see July 17) and in Reference Notes. From what I've read about Swartz his presentation at Midwinter should be a notable highlight.

Evaluating Emerging Technologies
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Philadelphia Convention Center (PCC), Room 108A
1:30-3:30 p.m.

As librarians, we need to keep pace with the innovations that are transforming how we reach and serve our customers. But with the vast number of competing technologies, how can you be confident that you are selecting the best solution for your customers? How are you certain that you are not squandering your limited finances and resources on fads and faulty solutions?

Aaron Swartz, co-author of RSS, co-creator of the Open Library project, co-founder of Reddit, and former adviser to Creative Commons, will be sharing his strategies on how to analyze competing technologies. His insights will help us invest in the resources that will best meet our customers' needs.

This is an opportunity to listen to a leader in the field and to engage in a dialog with him. Come explore this discussion on emerging technologies. You can't afford to miss it!

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi everyone, we're here at MLA and I'm posting my podcast from the session. Here you go: Download file, click here to listen.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Full story: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9790452-7.html
UC Berkeley lectures are now being posted and archived on YouTube. They have over 300 hours of video they are making available to the public on their YouTube site, http://youtube.com/ucberkeley with plans of adding more and expanding their content. This the first major offering of podcast lectures being made available to the public by any university. It will be interesting to see the usage and how it will be received as this grows.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a USA Today article in the technology section yesterday there is an interesting article on Google (image that!). Google leads the way by a land slide of gobal searches with 27 billion searches for the month of August 2007. Yahoo was a distant second with 8.5 billion searches. Interestingly, there were 2 foreign-based search engines that made the top 5 list, one from China and one from South Korea. Also, interesting ComScore, the company that conducted the research, "estimates that about 750 million people worldwide used Internet search in August, each person averaging about 80 searches." The web is an ever-growing world. It's good that people identify with search engines as vehicles for information results. It's also good for libraries to continue their growing relationship with Google on projects such as Google Scholar and Google Book to increase their presence on the web and with the information-seeking population.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pioneer Press has an article out today about educational software maker Innovative Knowledge that is now making their material available for use with iPods. As a learning supplement the sessions are now made transferable from disc/computer to iPods for learning-on-the-go.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From eSchool News, a study at Ball State's Center for Information and Communications Sciences, graduate student researchers worker with a group of third- and fourth-grade students uninterested in reading to see if how eBooks might influence their desire for reading. They found that 75% of the students enjoyed reading from the eBooks more than the print version and 65% prefered reading from a handheld device than the print counterpart.

The group is only half way through their research study and will continue to gather more data throughout the program length. For more information about the story, read it online here: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=7342.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Carnegie Mellon professor Scott E. Fahlman is credited with creating the first typographic emoticon, Smiley, as it is affectionately referred 25 years ago :-) "Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly." In honor of the aniversary Fahlman and collegues will begin a new annual award for students to encourage the further expansion of innovative technology-assisted communication.

For more information read the articles from the StarTribune and NY Times.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over at E-Strategy, they put together a fascinating video about keyword research. "Sound keyword research reveals not just the phrases people are using to search for your products, services, or information but also their state of mind, location, and point within the purchase cycle, among other things."

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How do you include the experience of 'smell' into a techy world? From The Shifted Librarian (Jenny Levine), apparently CafeScribe has figured out how to give people that all-around sensation of reading an ebook. According to CafeScribe (via Engadget "43 percent of students identified smell as the thing they most liked about their favorite books….” To this end, CafeScribe is "shipping “musty-smelling” scratch-and-sniff stickers with every ebook order." Hmmm... I don't know how this would work for library orders.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a great video that talks about what a wiki is and how it can be used by a group from David Erickson with e-strategyblog.com:

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was a little late getting to this session (as I will be for the next). I've found internet connection outside of the convention center to be very spotty. The convention center has slick wi-fi but everywhere else is not so good. All my sessions today are at hotels and I haven't found one to work yet! Ack!

Anyway, Mobile Sites for Libraries:
came in half way for Bradley Faust's presentation from Ball State U.
-sites to check out:
mobile site: www.bsu.edu/libraries/mobile
project info site: www.bsu.edu/library/mobile- (project info link available on this page)
Mobile sites - what works best:
-short pages
-easy to read fonts
-easy to navigate
-minimal images
-anywhere access
-offering BSU webmail client (through MicroSoft)

Card Cat Mobile - phase 1:
-custom gateway to card cat system designed for mobile devices
phase 2:
-going with z39.50
-developed using MicroSoft visual studio development
-adding mobile journals - make them searchable
-want to add mobile video - provide access to low bandwidth versions of library promotional videos
-found their mobile site works best with Pocket PC devices w wi-fi connection (2006)
-videos streamed in Windows Media format only - not compat. w Macs
-Google Co-op site search - added to mobile site - replaced mobile site map on the mobile site homepage (found it works better)

Future work:
-build out card cat mobile product
-build out mobile journals product
-build out library services - such as text messaging
-add blogs, rss, wikis, & other 2.0 solutions for mobile devices

North Carolina State U. w Markus Wust
urls:
-service: www.lib.ncsu.edu/m
-more info: www.lib.ncsu.edu.edu/dli/projects/mobilib

Why Mobile?
-growth of mobile phone industry
-spread of mobile phones - 2.7 billion mobile phones world wide
-educational institutions experiementing - ball state u & u. texas
-commercial content providers - yahoo/google/msn... - facebook, flickr, myspace
-Eric Schmidt, google ceo - "biggest growth area is in mobile"

No. Carolina State U doesn't have any data right now but going off of feedback in their libraries
-started w small set of services
-looked at what would be useful in mobile environment

Design:
considerations:
- variety of browsers/platforms
-small screens & input devices
-need for precise language (stay small)
-different usage scenarios

tech issues:
-xhtml
-access keys for easiest navigation
-phone numbers for keys

7 services focused on:
1.) catalog search
-basic search interface for the NCSU libraries online catalog
-default is keyword search, but users can also search by title, author, or isbn
-users can limit search to available items
2.) computers - availability of public access library computers
-shows pc's, macs or "web only" computers currently open for use in the library
3.) library hours
-today's and tomorrow's opening hours for all library locations and major service departments w/in library
4.) campus directory
-mobile version of the main ncsu campus directory
-searches whole campus or limits to students or faculty/staff
5.) contact us
-contact information for branch libraries and selected services at library
6.) links
-links to external mobile content providers
7.) wolfline status
-links to text-only version of transloc inc.'s transit visualization system map
-shows current location of buses in the university's transit system

found images and visual elements just didn't work - all text based
-very concise information provided and layed out well

Next steps:
-usability testing/focus groups
-implementation of feedback on current new services
-My MobiLIB - place holds, renew items
-exploring use of text messaging for lib. applications
-faceted browsing for catalog

Michelle Jacobs, U Cal - Merced
The Library in Your Pocket
-text messaging/SMS - short message service
-mobile applications
-mobile pages for your site

What to use
-smart phones & pocket pc's
-lib has cell phones only - no desk phones

How it was advertised:
-link on website
-mentioned in instruction classes
-word of mouth
Total transactions for spr. 07
-70 on a campus of 1300 fts - 2 faculty used the service!

simple steps:
-add text messaging to your plan (cell phone plan)
-list hours staffed
-add "My Text" for commonly asked questions - scripts

Favorites w students:
-facebook mobile
-social networking is going mobile - LIBRARIES SHOULD GO MOBILE

watch this:
-youtube vid:

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I mentioned in a previous post. I was going to talk about LibraryThing. LibraryThing is a (another) social site designed to let people share information about the books they love! You can add books to your list that your reading, read, want to read, look for suggestions and upcoming publications. You can make any and every part of your list public and view by anyone or just a select list of people. You can create book groups to meet and talk about books and view other talks to find out more information about specific books and authors.

Also, you can write your own reviews and make the accessible only on LibraryThing, allow LibraryThing to give your review to non-commercial entities (mosty libraries) or to both non-commercial and commercial entities (such as booksellers, publishers, authors, street gangs).

Who doesn't keep their own book list? I do and it has gotten a bit unwieldy as of late. So now I've just loaded it up on LibraryThing and manage it from there. Another neat factor: you can choose from 78 different sources to search from, most of which being libraries. I just searched the University of Chicago's catalog on LibraryThing for Charles Bukowski and found a new book published in Germany about him I had never heard of before, "The Germans love me for some reason - " : Charles Bukowski und Deutschland by Horst Schmidt. What a find!

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Do you tag "stuff"? Do you have tags in many different places such as Del.icio.us, Flickr, Gmail, Squirl, LibraryThing and Connotea? Who doesn't! Which reminds me, I haven't written about LibraryThing yet. I'll have to do a little write up on that next.

Anyway, TagsAhoy! "lets you search all your tags, across different sites, from one location". Sweet! They plan to add more sites to the list soon as well.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Social Poster is the latest evolution in social bookmarking. It's very easy to use also. Go to the Social Poster website and add the Social Poster button to your bookmarks toolbar by clicking and dragging, there's nothing to download. Then visit any site you wish to bookmark. Highlight some text and click on the Social Poster button. You'll come to a new page with your highlighted text, URL, and title of the page you were just at in the top right. All information there can be edited before posting. Social Poster will even create tags based on the content of the page.

Also, on the page are 34 social sites including, Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, and Technorati. You can submit the site to all or any of these sites by clicking the Post button. However, you do need to have an account with each of these social sites to post. For those that are sending lots of links of sites to friends and social sites this will definitely save you a lot of time and some wear and tear on your clicking finger!

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you ever dugg an article, blog or profile before? Digg is a social networking site that allows users (you, me and everyone we know) to submit and "digg" a story - vote on it's popularity or bury it based on a yay/nay, like/dislike attitude. If a story gets enough diggs it get promoted to the front page showing the number of diggs (votes) next to the title. Stories can also be posted to a user's blog as soon as they digg it. If you blog or write stories online (for your library or for personal enjoyment or necessity) posting your story to Digg will help give your site and writing more exposure and bring more traffic to your site.

Why do I care? You may ask. Well, as one librarian, the Connecting Librarian states,

For [stories] to get a lot of diggs, either the people posting the stories have to know a lot of people who they encourage to digg their entry, or it is an entry of great interest to a wide variety of people. Either way, its something that's of interest to a lot of people and therefore I think that I, as a public librarian, should be aware of.

Digg is not the only site out there that does this kind of thing. Another site that works on the same concept, stumbleupon actually has more registered users than (the popular) Digg. However, stumbleupon not only uses categories (mediated source) to separate and organize stories, like Digg, they also use tags (social networking) to organize stories. This form of filtering actually gives stumbleupon a leg up on Digg as far as user contributed content control.

Again, you may say, what do I care? You should, because as librarians, as organizers of content, we need to be looking at how users of the world wide web are not only categorizing and organizing content on the web, but also, how they perceive the information - important/not important. That's what these types of user-driven social content ranking sites are doing. They are letting us know what information people deem important and popular. Our role as filter for finding/suggesting best sources comes into play here as well as a good scrutinizing eye.

btw, if you would like more info about these sites and others like them, TechCrunch has a good article with summaries of major players.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Book Burro is a very simple and easy to install tool that will sense when you are viewing or searching for a book. A "Book Burro" tab will appear and when you click on it, it will queary for lowest book prices on other sites. It is synced up with WorldCat.org so it can also indicate library locations nearest your IP address. Very cool.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firedoodle is a Firefox add-on that let's you mark up webpages like a whiteboard. Just like when you make a screen print of a page and bring it in photoshop, snag-it, or powerpoint to point out things on a page, you can do the same with this tool. You can save your work and also mark your spot on a page that you're reading so you don't lose your place. It's pretty neat, check it out for yourself.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have a little fun with your chat and IM messages! I just discovered ChatFu. It allows you to copy and paste chat and IM messages into the Cartoonify Chat box in ChatFu and it will create a cartoon of your message! Now, you probably don't want to highlight patron sessions to the general public but there is the potential for a lot of fun here.

I was just playing around with this with a colleague and discovered that I could easily copy & paste complete chat histories from my meebo account but he was not able to do a complete copy & paste from his gaim account. He had to mannually delete out the timestamps in his gaim history for it to work in ChatFu. There may be other little oddities with other software but still, this seems really neat. Give it a try. I dare you not to have fun!

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't stop talking about the Meebo Me widget. And, apparently, other libraries are discovering this great new tool of having an ever-present chat window on your library's website. Caleb Tucker-Raymond from Oregon Libraries Network has this to say from his blog. He talks about adding script to turn the widget on and off when needed to work with the statewide service. This is for individual libraries that are part of the statewide digital reference service that also want to provide their own IM reference service.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've discovered that even though I may be logged out of my IM people still have the opportunity to leave me a message via the chat window. The next time I log back in to my IM I get the waiting message. The problem with this is that unless the person leaving the message also supplies their contact information I have no way of knowing who that person was because I only see "MeeboGuest" on my end.

There are a couple of things you can do to avoid this if you are using the chat window widget for your IM service. You can add write some text to go along with your widget to indicate to patrons to leave their email or IM address when leaving a message offline. Also, you can have your IT staff write code so that your widget only appears on your website during the hours it is staffed. This may also help alleviate confusion for patrons of whether someone is actually available to answer their question in real-time.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lately, I've been looking at the sites LibX.org and Conduit.com. They offer FREE! tools that allow you to create an ever-present toolbar for your digital reference service. You can also use it for other services such as your catalog. Patrons can download the toolbar onto their own browser (I've found that it works best with Firefox) and connect to a librarian (when the service is available) at any given whim. Ask a question without even going to the library's website. What a great way to promote your service!

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, as I mentioned earlier, I added a chat window to this blog. The Meebo Me widget. However, there is another chat window widget out there that I wanted to bring attention to. It’s called Plugoo, www.plugoo.com. The differences between MeeboMe and Plugoo are that Plugoo works in conjunction with another IM client, like GoogleTalk, AOL, MSN. You need to be registered with one of those IM clients but the user asking a question need not be registered or logged in to another IM client. Also, Plugoo will only allow one chat session at a time. If you are chatting with a user other users that visit your site will see a “busy” message in the chat window. MeeboMe allows you to chat with as many users as you can stand at once.

I also found out that Plugoo is from a company based in France which adheres to more strict computer privacy regulations than the U.S. In case that makes any difference in reviewing chat window widget products. I decided to go with Meebo Me because I was already using them as my multiplatform IM client account manager and it was just so easy to set up and use. I'm sure Plugoo is just as easy to use but it doesn't have a multiplaform feature and I am pretty hooked on Meebo's multiplatform manager.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Helping students jump-start their research! The latest Cool Tool @ Your Library for Minnesota secondary school students and their teachers is here. The Research Project Calculator, www.elm4you.org/research, is a great way to introduce students to the research process.

The calculator gives students the option of choosing between three different format types for their project: essay, powerpoint, or video. Once a student enters an end date for their project and format type the calculator will show them the process broken down into 5 steps: Question, Gather, Conclude, Communication, and Evaluate with completion dates for each step. Each step offers information about what that step entails and how to go about completing it. For instance, Step 2, Gather, gives information about what the step is about, where to look for information, forming search techniques, how to identify best sources, how to record information, and how to cite sources. Students can then either print out the steps or have the steps emailed to themselves.

Look for more information about the Research Calculator and other interesting articles coming in the March issue of Reference Notes.

Posted by Carla Pfahl at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)