The Distant Librarian

Author: Paul R. Pival

  • Wikibooks takes on textbook industry

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Interesting idea… Link: Wikibooks takes on textbook industry. if Jimmy Wales and his colleagues at the Wikimedia Foundation have anything to say about it, you could have another way to go–the Wikibooks project. It’s their attempt to create a comprehensive, kindergarten-to-college curriculum of textbooks that are free and freely distributable, based on an open-source development…

  • In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Cool!  A current copyright law title that’s fully available online with a creative commons license – that’s putting your money where your mouth is!   Sorry for the majority of you, this is Canadian copyright law, but here’s the summary: Link: In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law. From Grokster to Google, copyright…

  • Do you see what I see?

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    Paul R. Pival
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    I think I might start another blog in which I just complain about the weather we have here so close to the Rockies.  My wife thinks I complain too much, but hey, if that’s the only thing to complain about where I live that’s not so bad, is it?  I know this isn’t much of…

  • CaptivatePlayer: Delivering Captivate Content on the Web

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Hey, check this out!  Greg Szczyrbak, one of the first people I knew who jumped on the Captivate bandwagon, pointed me to CaptivatePlayer: Delivering Captivate Content on the Web. Basically it’s a menu wrapper for Captivate Flash files- a simple way to organize and make them available to the end user.  Looks pretty straightforward in…

  • Screencasting tools comparison

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    Paul R. Pival
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    The TeleCampus Course Development Team at the University of Texas recently completed a side-by-side comparison of the major screencasting tools.  Look across the top of the page for the links to demos of Captivate, ViewletBuilder/ViewletCam, and Camtasia.  Last "tab" is a comparison, which I found a little confusing.  There are numbers running down the left…

  • Next version of JYBE

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Sarah reports there’s a new version of JYBE on the horizon: LibrarianInBlack: JYBE in all its rosy goodness.  Lots of added features, and for the first time, a pricetag.  Well, we don’t know what the pricetag will be exactly, but for the library version there will be one.  Good idea to add customized toolbar options…

  • How appropriate for the first day of Fall

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Here’s what my little weather bug showed me when I first sat down at the computer this AM:    It’s comin’ folks!

  • Writely – The Web Word Processor

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Not really library related, but what an interesting tool for distance students (or any students).  Writely – The Web Word Processor, is just that, plus some.  Create an account, and you can upload or create a document online.  It’s got a WYSIWYG editor, and multiple people can collaborate on the same document, which can be…

  • Projections of Education Statistics to 2014 (but not distance)

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    Paul R. Pival
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    The US Dept of Education recently released their Projections of Education Statistics to 2014 (PDF).  Why do these reports always seem to cop out and not address distance education?!? From section 2 – Enrollment in Degree-Granting Institutions: Factors that were not consideredThe enrollment projections do not take into account such factors as the cost of…

  • New Interlibrary Loan Feature for WilsonWeb 2.5

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    Paul R. Pival
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    I don’t see this feature in our version of WilsonWeb, so it obviously needs to be "switched on", which makes sense since it would need to be married to your local ILL system.  We’re eventually going to offer one-click ILL through our SFX menu, but if you don’t have SFX or similar, and if you…