Author: Paul R. Pival
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Getting closer to linking into Digital Dissertations
New category added for my blog today: Linking. One of the things I use this blog for is as a reference tool, a place to keep annotated bookmarks. As a new semester begins I’m asked by faculty to help them build persistent links to articles to insert into BlackBoard, and I can do the common…
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OCLC’s Data Visualization Pilot with Antarctica Systems Inc.
This is pretty neat. I’ve seen other pilots of Antarctica’s visual catalogue interface before, but this is the first one I’ve seen that attempts to lead you to an online version of the book in question. The interface is really fast, which I appreciate. Maybe that’s because this is a small test set of data? …
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Can a country digitize everything it has ever written?
Michael Geist writes a weekly column for the Toronto Star called Bytes that often touches upon technology or ideas that would be of interest to distance librarians. Unfortunately the Star requires you to register to view content, and while it’s free it’s still a pain. Fortunately Michael also posts some of his columns to the…
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VRD 2004: Presentations
The proceedings of the 2004 Virtual Reference Desk Conference are now available online. This conference was held Nov 8-9 in Cincinnati, OH. There are 37 presentations online in the following categories: Management, General, Evaluation & Standards, Technology, Resources, and Research & Policy. The 2005 VRD 7th Annual Reference Conference will be held on November 14-15,…
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ebrary Introduces Isaac; Launches Custom Collections; Announces Perpetual Access Model; Distributes Via Blackwell’s; Partners with BookSurge
My library doesn’t subscribe to ebrary, but this is certainly news of interest to those supporting distance education… ebrary Introduces Isaac; Launches Custom Collections; Announces Perpetual Access Model; Distributes Via Blackwell’s; Partners with BookSurge [via EContent: Breaking News]
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eLiteracy Conference 2005 :: Welcome to eLit 2005
This may have been announced before (I suspect so, as the deadline for the CFP is January 28th), but the 4th International Conference on eLiteracy is being held in Glasgow, Scotland from June 15-17. A couple of my colleagues presented at this conference when it was last held in Glasgow in 2003; they really enjoyed…
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The Future of Books
I think Technology Review might be my new favorite publication. Just finished a short article called The Future of Books, by Jason Epstein, who "…worked in book publishing for more than 4o years. He was editorial director of Random House and founded Anchor Books, the New York Review of Books, the Library of America, and…
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Good graphic for the invisible web
I just finished reading an interesting article in Technology Review (What’s next for Google) that’s mostly about how Google has to start paying more attention to MS or risk being eaten, but what caught my eye was a neat table with the caption, "The searchable Internet (in red) contains only a fraction as much information…
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Macromedia Captivate – First Impressions
For a long time now I’ve wanted to compare my favorite tutorial-building tool, Qarbon ViewletBuilder, to Macromedia Robodemo. Well I waited so long Macromedia came out with a new product called Captivate, and during this slow week before Christmas I finally took some time to give it a test drive. I hope to build the…
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Course Management Systems – EduTools
A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to land on a campus committee that was charged with re-examining whether we wanted to renew our license with WebCT, or to jump to a different CMS. I was quite pleased that we made the switch to BlackBoard, because I found it easier to offer library…