BCU Library

Classroom activity using about 200 random photos to help students see transitions across ideas in a different way.  The previous blog post on this activity had the students working individually: http://blog.billiehara.org/?p=729  This post is about a similar activity in small groups. 

A new status code to reflect internet censorship could be named after Ray Bradbury's most famous novel, Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury's fiction looks set to enter the structure of the internet, after a software developer has proposed a new HTTP status code inspired by Fahrenheit 451.

Information Literacy and the First-Year Experience ... big collection of links to reports, articles, and books about this big topic.

I was seated in the bleachers at an away football game when the father of a student-athlete approached me. He was eager to welcome me as the new president of Central College.

In March, Inside Higher Ed released an "inaugural" Survey of College & University Chief Academic Officers.  This report was the fourth in a series of surveys of senior academic leaders with the three other reports conducted in 2011 focusing on admissions officers, chief business officers, and presidents.

Without going into too much detail, instaGrok basically lets you punch in any search term (I'd recommend using a subject matter or item you're learning about) and get a neatly formatted and interactive experience as search results

"We thought it would be interesting to see what sorts of computational insights Wolfram|Alpha could provide, so we uploaded the complete catalog of Shakespeare's plays into our database. This allows our users to examine Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, and the rest of the Bard's plays in an entirely new way."

Incredible list of resources about teaching -- course planning, classroom management, learning activities, assessment and more. Wealth of information here. 

Tabbed display for multiple open wizards in the Workflows staff client for added efficiency; Indexing improvements and additional configuration options for use with the Item Group Editor wizard for increased accuracy and ease of use; Support for multilingual MARC record holdings including display enumeration and chronology information in the same language as the associated MARC bibliographic record, for convenience and time savings; SMS notification support giving libraries an additional efficient and cost-effective notification option for reaching library users;

Today we are launching the OCLC WorldShare Platform, a shared technical infrastructure that will support a growing number of OCLC services and applications. This platform will enable library developers, partners and other organizations to create, configure and share a wide range of applications that deliver new functionality and value for libraries and their users.

Was the Internet helpful to civilization?

a new public library in London with an unusual shape

Only 11 students in the survey, but as we saw with our usability testing, patterns tend to emerge with even a small group of people. 

A separate LibGuide was spun-off just for staff training ... one of those guides is this one - a LibGuide about LibGuides. 

Lots of links to reports and articles about library software including ILS vendors. Great resources!

What does your community want and need from a library? If you're a librarian, chances are you've made efforts to find out, to strategically plan, to adjust services to local interests and changing needs. Rarely, though, do any of us get to see a broad view of our library community through the filter of independent data.

  "Old models of library operation may disappear, but that does not mean they can't be replaced.  Academic libraries' central book model is temporarily insulated by high prices, but change will come just the same.  The time provided by this insulation should be used to explore sources of content like local special collections with clear ownership and distribution rights.  Without restrictions like those imposed by many third party vendors, special collections can provide a proving ground for next generation interfaces and services. This home-grown expertise within libraries can then be applied on a wider basis in the future.                 The examples and efforts discussed in this column share one thing at their core, and that is that they are services made by libraries, for libraries.  As a collective institution, libraries have great expertise in building sustainable preservation systems capable of lasting many years.  Third party vendors do not have a proven track record on building long term preservation systems for electronic resources at this point in time.  By placing our trust, funds, and collections in the hands of those third parties we turn libraries into middlemen.  For the short term gain of providing easy access to next generation library services, we risk disintermediation by those vendors and removal from the service equation entirely.  Libraries of all types and sizes can look inward and grow from our strengths.  Major publishers and content providers aren't likely to allow new services with the same scope libraries enjoyed in the past.  Fortunately, special collections and collaborative efforts are accessible to even the smallest library as perfect opportunities for gaining relevant experience and expertise.  By basing that experience and expertise on homegrown services built by and for libraries, they can ensure a sustainable future of next generation services."

The books present recent research on these subjects in a palatable way using interactive maps, podcasts and audio-visual materials. The result, which can be shared freely amongst both academic and non-academic individuals alike, is an engaging and diverse resource for researching and teaching relevant science issues across the humanities.