Weekly Reader

I've been using Diigo for the last six months; the transition from Delicious to Diigo was easy and at the time I needed my bookmarks available immediately.  Like the previous move to Google Reader, I hoped at some point I would be pleased with the results.  This week I had email messages from Delicious with information regarding their recent acquisition by the founders of YouTube and the opportunity to let them move my bookmarks to the new provider. 

"AVOS plans to continue the service that users have come to know and love and by working with the community, make the site even easier and more fun to save, share and discover the web's "tastiest" content" (Delicious FAQs).

I've given permission to move my bookmarks.  They've been gathering dust for four months, what could it hurt?  Here's this week's weekly reader round-up. Naturally, there's a link to information about Delicious included.

YouTube Founders Save Delicious, But is it too Late?
"After news leaked out that Yahoo! was shutting down Delicious (then announcing plans on selling the social bookmarking service), it looks like the former Internet titan has found a new lease on life under new leadership." -- Darnell Clayton, The Blog Herald, 4/27/11

The Real LMS Failure (Hint: We Should Look in the Mirror)
"We spend way too much energy thinking and worrying about LMS providers, features, companies and technologies. Blackboard or D2L or Moodle or Sakai or (now) Instructure? Open source or proprietary? This discussion board or that assessment engine? etc. etc. etc. The real LMS failure has nothing to do with any of these questions. Whether you are a Blackboard or Sakai school matters only marginally to our success in what truly matters about the LMS; how well we are utilizing the LMS to improve, support and facilitate authentic student learning." -- Joshua Kim, Blog U Technology & Learning, 4/28/11


ACRL National 2011: Conference Papers
An alphabetical listing of papers presented at ACRL National 2011 is now available in PDF. -- 4/26/11

Do You Over Explain? Five Speaker Tips for Using Data, Details Wisely
"You're smart--and loaded with facts, numbers, data points and the charts, graphs and diagrams to go with them. But if you haven't thought through how to use data and details sparingly, your audience will just get overwhelmed and miss your message. Try these five useful tactics for taming that tsunami of technical detail in your next presentation:" --  Denise Graveline, The Eloquent Woman, 4/26/11

Web Surveillance and the Campus (Blown to Bits II)
"Every Campus Life dean, academic counselor, undergraduate dean, and disciplinary officer should read Blown to Bits: You Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion.  Then, they should summarize the statements in the opening chapters and present them to students at orientation sessions, in email blasts, and in informal occasions, for instance, when they address student groups." -- Mark Bauerlein, Brainstorm, 4/25/11 

OLSSI 2011

One MONSTER of a Conference!

The Ohio Library Support Staff Institute

July 31 – August 2, 2011

Ohio University - Athens, Ohio

The OLSSI Steering Committee is proud to announce the TENTH ANNUAL Ohio Library Support Staff Institute!

Budget issues haven’t gotten any easier for libraries, and so we have worked hard to prepare three days and two nights of outstanding classes, programs and lectures, along with evening entertainment & activities, for the same reasonable price for 10 straight years – $225.00 !

And we will again be having Early Bird Registration – with the discounted price of $200.00 – from April 5th through May 5th! And we’ll be offering three scholarships for first-time attendees, to have the event paid for in full!

Important dates are:

• Scholarship Contest: March 14 – April 14
• Early Bird Registration ($200): April 5 – May 5
• Regular Registration ($225): May 6 – July 6
• OLSSI 2011: July 31 – August 2, 2011

And also of note, we’ll be having a costume contest Sunday night to go with this year’s “spooky” theme, and our Grand Prize giveaway on Tuesday will be a Color Nook e-book reader!

So, stop by our new website at http://www.olssi.org/ to see our complete class & instructor list and the registration form. And, as always, feel free to contact us with any and all questions:

Michael Bradshaw
E-mail: Michael.Bradshaw -at- sc.ohio.gov

* Announcement origin: ALAO List Serv, 4/25/11

Weekly Reader

I've "cheated" a bit with this weekly reader, it's scheduled to publish at the regular Friday time while I enjoy the Easter holiday weekend.  Among other things, there has been a lot of interesting discussion this week regarding rumors of a Blackboard buy-out and Amazon's Kindle policy for library users.

Amazon to Allow Library Lending of Kindles (Updated)
"Library patrons across the United States will soon be able to borrow ebooks from over 11,000 libraries using Amazon's Kindle reading device. Long a missing link in the library lending chain, Amazon's announcement today that it will offer, sometime later this year, Kindle library lending is likely to create a flood of demand, since many patrons have long been puzzled and librarians irritated by the inability to use the market-leading device to access library books." -- Michael Kelly, Library Journal, 4/20/11

Amazon to Introduce Library Lending for Kindle
"Amazon.com announced today that it will make Kindle books available for library lending later this year. Its partner in the Kindle Library Lending program is OverDrive, a widely used distributor of e-books and audiobooks. Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone,” the company said in its announcement. “If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer’s annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.”" - Jennifer Howard, Wired Campus, 4/20/11

Which Streaming Video Site is Right For Your Video Content
"There are a lot of options out there for distributing your brand’s custom video content. Obviously, YouTube is the biggest player in the market and one you can’t ignore. But depending on your content and the audiences you are trying to reach, it’s worth considering some others. I took some time and explored some of the other sites out there. I focus below on what the channel’s unique value appears to be and what the audience seems like. It’s important when distributing video that your content fit the channel and resonate with the audience. Otherwise it will just be stranded out there." -- Josh Cole, TippingPoint Lab Blogs, 4/21/11

Fake Web Site Pretends to Be Youngstown State U.’s
"Youngstown State University has been plagued by a Web mimic. Officials alerted the campus community last week to a Web site that appeared to be masquerading as the official university Web site, according to the Youngstown State student newspaper The Jambar." -- Ben Wieder, Wired Campus, 4/21/11


Quickwire: Blackboard is Considering Takover Proposals
"Blackboard Inc., the course-management software company, announced on Tuesday that it was considering proposals to acquire the company. It did not disclose the source of the proposals. Blackboard’s stock jumped by nearly 30 percent early on Tuesday afternoon to its highest point since 2007." -- Josh Keller, QuickWire, The Chronicle Wired Campus, 4/20/11

Blackboard Considers Purchase Offer
"Blackboard, the e-learning giant, announced on Tuesday that it has received "unsolicited, non-binding proposals" to be bought out. The company, which is publicly traded, appears to be taking the offers seriously; it has retained the investment firm Barclays Capital to help it figure out whether it wants to sell. Blackboard's stock leaped by nearly 30 percent with the news." -- Quick Takes, Inside Higher Ed, 4/20/11

Blogger Redesigned
"Today, we're thrilled to announce the public launch of our redesign! But please wait a second before you go check out your Blogger dashboard, because we’re planning a gradual rollout that will start with a limited set of users who visit our new feature testing ground, Blogger in Draft. At the start, only some of you (lucky draws!) can see the new design on Blogger in Draft. Over the course of the next few days and weeks we’ll be ramping up to support all Draft users. " -- Jinwoo Lee, Blogger in Draft, 4/19/11

5 Myths About the Information Age
"Confusion about the nature of the so-called information age has led to a state of collective false consciousness. It's no one's fault but everyone's problem, because in trying to get our bearings in cyberspace, we often get things wrong, and the misconceptions spread so rapidly that they go unchallenged. Taken together, they constitute a font of proverbial nonwisdom. " -- Robert Darnton, The Chronicle Review, 4/17/11

ALAO Research & Publication Grant Opportunity

The following announcement is from ALAO Research and Publications Committee Chair Mark Eddy and was originally posted on the CMCIG blog.

ALAO RPC Research Grant - Round Two!

The ALAO RPC is very pleased to announce a second round of our Research Grant program for 2011. This is a special, one-time opportunity for our ALAO members to apply for up to $500 in research funding.

This second round will be a "lightning round" with completed grant applications due to the RPC chair by May 20, 2011. Awards will be announced by June 1, 2011. The awards can be applied to such research costs as data organization, hiring research assistants, and modest travel costs.

The Academic Library Association of Ohio (ALAO) seeks to promote research. The ALAO Executive Board may award up to $500.00 to support and encourage research projects proposed by ALAO members. Both ongoing and new research projects are considered. Grants are intended to help in funding such incremental research costs as the organization of data, the hiring of interviewers or other assistants, charges for computer time, and modest travel costs associated with research. Grants may not be used for purchase of equipment. Grants are limited to investigations related to issues in libraries, librarianship, and information science and technology.

For more information and to apply for the 2011 ALAO Research Grant please visit our ALAO web page.  Questions? Contact the Chair of the Research & Publications Committee, Mark Eddy, mark.eddy -at- case.edu .

QR Codes in color?

A Mashable post about QR codes caught my attention this afternoon, "How to Make Your QR Codes More Beautiful."

"A thing of beauty or an eyesore? The magical barcodes that can be scanned by a smartphone to launch an offline-to-online experience are often criticized for their black and white checkerbox appearance. " -- Hamilton Chan

I have to admit, changing the color of a QR code was not something I considered. Adjusting the QR code size? Sure. Making everything around the QR code more visually appealing? Definitely.But actually changing the color or display, even branding it to match a LibGuide or presentation? The sanctity of the black and white code seemed generally untouchable. But now, the possibilities are interesting.



These are four renditions of a QR code generated for the LibGuide supporting our ACRL Cyber Zed Shed presentation, To the Cloud. The upper left code is a traditional black & white rendition. I copied the QR code image into Word to adjust color and display. First, I changed black to blue and left the white area intact. I also worked with color and picture style using "simple frame, white" and "bevel perspective." Results were certainly more visually appealing, but I was curious to learn if the code remained functional. So, I pulled out my phone and tested each with the bar code app.

The original QR code worked flawlessly, as did the first color change. It took more time for my reader to focus and scan the framed orange code, even longer for the beveled green code. In the end, all four codes directed my phone to the correct URL and successfully display the LibGuide. I like the visual appeal of the last two codes, but found having to adjust it in the app scan area took more time than may be warranted. Form or function? It will be interesting to see how QR codes may evolve.

Update: ALAO Conference 11/4/11

QR Codes were part of an ALAO conference presentation, Web Tools: The More Things Change. A QR Code and 2D Generator was featured, this site offers users opportunit to develop a QR code specifying a foreground and background color. Enter the hex code for a specific color or use the color picker provided.

The 2011 Library Blog Awards

Salem Press is once again honoring library blogs.  If you are interested in nominating your favorite, take a few minutes to review their submission process.

"Blogs about libraries continue to spread across the web, with hundreds of people writing about books, libraries, and related subjects. Last year Salem Press set out on a mission to reward the achievements of librarian bloggers. Several hundred blogs by and about librarians entered the pool of nominations when the contest was announced. After the votes were tallied, 16 blogs were awarded prizes in five topical categories. Some were well-known and well-established, others on the rise or newly discovered. (For more information about last year's blogs, click 2010 Library Blog Awards.)"

"2011 Nominations:  Please share your favorite blogs with us. Doing so will enter your beloved online reading in our 2011 Awards process. We'll be accepting suggestions through June 1, 2011. To send us nominations (including a working link to the blog), email ptobey@salempress.com."

Weekly Reader

I have serious computer envy; attending a campus technology meeting yesterday, two members had new HP Slate 500 Tablet PCs. Sure, they will be introducing tablets to compete with iPad later this year, but the Slate was getting rave reviews from both users. As a result, this week's wrap-up is a bit heavy on the technology, though there are library (Happy National Library Week!), and general interest items. 

Colleges Aren’t Keeping Up With Student Demand for Hybrid Programs,
Survey Suggests
"Students want hybrid programs that blend online and face-to-face experiences. But colleges don’t seem to be providing enough of them to meet the demand. That’s one message that emerges from the results of a national survey of more than 20,000 current and prospective adult students that were just released by Eduventures, a consulting firm." -- Marc Parry, Wired Campus, 4/14/11

Is Your Human Showing? Be Real and Be Credible
"A recent study conducted at Elizabethtown College, however, suggests that may not be entirely true. In order to examine the role of self-disclosure in perceived credibility, 120 students between the ages of 18 and 23 were split into three groups. Each group followed the tweeting of a supposed professor. One group saw only scholarly tweets, one group saw only social tweets and the last group saw a mix of the two. Each “professor” included the same number of tweets and hyperlinks. Students were asked to rate the credibility of the professor they followed based on the tweets they observed." -- Brains on Fire, Social Media Today, 4/14/11

Librarians: Masters of the Info Universe
"Librarians, information specialists, knowledge managers or whatever title a librarian might have -- their skills are in high demand. And, though you might not know it, they are everywhere. And so in their honor during National Library Week, we enjoy the following tidbits of information." -- Kerith Page McFadden, CNN Living, 4/12/11

YouTube Copyright Education (remix)
"Because copyright law can be complicated, education is critical to ensure that our users understand the rules and continue to play by them. That’s why today we’re releasing a new tutorial on copyright and a redesigned copyright help center. We’re also making two changes to our copyright process to be sure that our users understand the rules, and that users who abide by those rules can remain active on the site." -- Justin Green, YouTube Blog, 4/14/11

Why All the Fuss Over PhD Academic Librarians?
"While no one has called it Trzeciakgate yet, I can’t help but see some similarities between what’s happening now with his presentation at Penn State University and the whole Michael Gorman firestorm (then labeled “Gormangate”) of 2005. Are you too new to the profession to remember Gormangate? " -- Steven Bell, ACRLog, 4/13/11

Biola professor goes outside the box to explain imaginary numbers
"Right before April Fools Day, math students at Biola University in Southern California learned the difference between real and imaginary numbers from professor Matthew Weathers and his imaginary self, who appears in a YouTube video." -- Jenna Johnson, Campus Overload, 4/12/11

Pagination Comes to Google Docs
"Today, we’re doing another first for web browsers by adding a classic word processing feature—pagination, the ability to see visual pages on your screen. We’re also using pagination and some of Chrome’s capabilities to improve how printing works in Google Docs. Pagination is rolling out now and should be available to everyone by the end of the day." -- Luiz Pereira, Docs Blog, 4/12/11

7 Things You Should Know About the Modern Learning Commons
"The learning commons, sometimes called an “information commons,” has evolved from a combination library and computer lab into a full-service learning, research, and project space. As a place where students can meet, talk, study, and use “borrowed” equipment, the learning commons brings together the functions of libraries, labs, lounges, and seminar areas in a single community gathering place. The cost of a learning commons can be an obstacle, but for institutions that invest in a sophisticated learning commons, the new and expanded partnerships across disciplines facilitate and promote greater levels of collaboration. The commons invites students to devise their own approaches to their work and to transfer what they learn in one course to the work they do for another." -- John P. Lippencott, Stacey Greenwell, Educause, 4/11/11

Microsoft Shows Off Internet Explorer 10
"Just a scant four weeks after the launch of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft is back with the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10. Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, unveiled the new platform preview of IE10 at the ongoing Mix developer conference in Las Vegas."-- Scott Gilbertson, WebMonkey, 4/11/11

Taking a Closer Look at Open Peer Review
"Open peer review—which gives anyone who’s interested a chance to weigh in on scholarly content before it’s published—just got an institutional boost. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has given New York University Press and MediaCommons a $50,000 grant to take a closer look at open, or peer-to-peer (P2P), review, the press announced today. MediaCommons is a digital scholarly network hosted by the NYU Libraries and affiliated with the Institute for the Future of the Book." -- Jennifer Howard, Wired Campus, 4/11/11

ALAO 2011: Submission Deadline Extended!

Presentation and Poster Session Deadline:

NOW EXTENDED to April 22nd, 2011

Constant Change, Constant Opportunity
ALAO Annual Conference 2011
Call for Proposals





The Academic Library Association of Ohio (ALAO) *37th Annual Conference*
November 3rd and 4th, 2011
Hilton Toledo Hotel, Toledo, OH

Presentation and Poster Session Deadline: April 8th, 2011

The ALAO Conference Planning Committee invites you to submit proposals for presentations, 25-minute spotlight sessions, or poster sessions that bring new ideas or approaches useful for academic libraries. This year’s conference theme, “ Constant Change, Constant Opportunity,” looks at the challenges facing academic libraries as budgetary, institutional, occupational, and technological changes cause us to reflect and adapt how we provide services to our users and communities.

Presentations may take the form of contributed papers, demonstrations, workshops, research, or panel discussions. Spotlight sessions can be “lightning round” style programs, multimedia slides, or other presentation techniques that cover a subject or issue that can be dealt with in a 25-minute time frame. Poster sessions should embrace the conference theme and present original ideas, innovative solutions to problems, library-related projects, or creative approaches to dealing with change in today’s academic libraries.

• Support Staff Presenter Grant Form
• Student Presenter Grant Form

This year we have available both a Support Staff Presenter Grant and a Student Presenter Grant. Further details on both grants are available at the URLs above. For more information regarding the Call for Proposals for presentations, spotlight sessions, or poster sessions, contact the Conference Planning Committee members listed below:

Katie Gibson – Presentations and Spotlight Sessions
Email: gibsonke at muohio.edu

Masha Misco – Poster Sessions
Email: stepanm at muohio.edu

For more details, proposal forms, and presentation grant forms, please check the conference website: http://www.alaoweb.org/events.

We look forward to receiving your proposals for the 2011 ALAO Annual Conference!

Weekly Reader

I'm putting my thoughts and various technology resources in order after attending ACRL in Philadelphia last week. For the first time, I did not create any handwritten notes. Instead I posted the titles of various sessions I attended, along with accompanying Twitter hashtags (#acrl2011 and #czs11), on Facebook and Twitter, I took photos of PowerPoint slides with my camera and phone, and snapped QR codes to locate and save URLs from poster sessions. No paper handouts, no information sheets, nothing to weed prior to packing for the return trip. Excepting the purse I bought at Macys, my suitcase weighed the same at both ends of the conference. This week's reader collection is sans anything posted during the conference; even with technology in hand, I did not have time to keep up with the reader.

Beyond the Job: Our Final Post
The end of a blog.... "After 3 1/2 years and over 1700 posts, we’ve decided it’s time to say farewell to Beyond the Job. We’ve both moved on to other projects, which leaves us less time to keep this site up to date." -- Sarah Johnson, Rachel Singer Gordon, Beyond the Job, 4/7/11

2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report
"To understand how marketers are using social media, Social Media Examiner commissioned the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. We set out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing with this report. A significant 3300 social media marketers provided valuable insight you won’t find elsewhere." -- Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner, 4/7/11

Slide into These Cool Presentation Tools
"Into each work life, some slides must, well, slide. But you can make the most of them with this collection of updates." -- Denise Graveline, The Eloquent Woman, 4/7/11

OhioLINK Receives $750K Grant to Bolster Math, Engineering Courses
"OhioLINK has been named a recipient of a $750,000 grant from Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC), a new initiative focused on identifying and scaling technology-enabled approaches to dramatically improve college readiness and completion, especially for low-income young adults. OhioLINK’s winning project will build off of its successful Ohio Digital Bookshelf program by creating multimedia and self-assessment tools to help students succeed in fundamental math and applied engineering courses. " -- Stacy Brannan , OhioLINK What's New, 4/7/11

Shelving Made Easy (or Easier)
"Putting misshelved books back in their proper places is not a library worker’s favorite task. It takes time and it’s not exactly scintillating. Now a computer-science professor has come up with a way to make the process faster and less burdensome: an augmented-reality shelf-reading app that can scan an entire shelf’s worth of books at a time and alert workers which ones are out of place."-- Jennifer Howard, Wired Campus, 4/6/11

CMCIG Spring Workshop: Registration Open!

“Local Resources and Collaborations”
ALAO-Curriculum Materials Centers Interest Group

When? Friday, May 20, 2011 ~ 8:30 to 4:00

Where? Wright State University ~ Educational Resource Center

How can you locate and leverage local resources in your CMC? This workshop is for those interested in learning about resources readily available and inspiring partnerships and collaborations.

After a picnic lunch, we will tour the Holocaust Exhibit in the National Museum of the United States Air Force and see WSU’s active partnership with the Dayton Holocaust Resource Center.

Complete details, including travel information, session descriptions, and presenter bios, can be found on the CMCIG Events page.

Registration is $35 and includes continental breakfast, lunch, and museum fees. Questions? Please contact Stephanie Bange, stephanie.bange at wright.edu.

* Originally posted on CMCIG Blog.