The Distant Librarian

Author: Paul R. Pival

  • Trillian coming to the Mac

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in

    The Cerulean Studios blog reports that they’re going to be bringing Trillian Astra to OSX. Technorati Tags: Trillian, OSX, Reference, IM

  • Becoming slightly more Distant

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in ,

    Starting next week I’ve got a new job, at least for the next 6 months.  Our Public Services Systems librarian recently left for the warmer pastures of British Columbia, and rather than operate with a hole in a critical position we’re filling the position on a 6-month interim basis with me.  During that time we’ll…

  • IM Reference launches at the U of Calgary

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in , ,

    Yesterday we soft-launched our IM reference service here at the U of Calgary.  We’re using Meebo to handle all our accounts, and also chose it for the ability to use the MeeboMe widgets.  Back when I did my screencasting seminar for the SirsiDynix Institute, Sarah Houghton-Jan asked a question that really stuck with me; “can…

  • Camtasia Studio v5 on the way

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in

    Techsmith is about to release version 5 of Camtasia Studio, their excellent screencasting product.  Betsy Weber is going to be introducing a new feature each day from now until the release date on October 9th, and first up is a feature called SmartFocus.  Troy Stein, Camtasia’s product manager, has a good screencast (how else?) about…

  • CLUE: Campus Library User Education

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in

    This showed up in my delicious feed watching for other people bookmarking examples of screencasts – U of Wisconsin-Madison’s CLUE: Campus Library User Education.  It’s built using Adobe Captivate, and doesn’t include a lot of what we’d traditionally consider "screencasting", but I really like how it’s seamlessly integrated into the web pages instead of offered…

  • Second Life for Distance Education

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in ,

    The Chronicle has a very brief piece mentioning San Jose State University’s use of Second Life to deliver instruction to distance students enrolled in their SLIS program.  Also included is a video segment from their local PBS station in which several faculty and students are interviewed.  Lots of strong comments about the use of Second…

  • Social Software, libraries & distance learners

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in ,

    Just learned about the Social Software, libraries & distance learners blog at the University of London – it’s part of their LASSIE (Libraries and Social Software in Education) Project.  LASSIE "is exploring how social software might enhance distance learners’ use of libraries. It also considers more widely the value of new technologies, commonly called web…

  • It’s coming…

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in ,

    Too busy to blog about anything substantial these days, but I needed to pop on and note that flurries were spotted in the air this AM.  Mark the date – September 19, first “snowfall”…  Might try a linkdump later in the week.  Until then…

  • Featured speaker announced for OCLSC 2008 in Salt Lake

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in

    Connie Hildebrand writes to the OFFCAMP discussion list that Lynn Copeland, Dean of Library Services at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC has been selected as the featured speaker for the 2008 Off Campus Library Services Conference to be held in Salt Lake City, UT.  From the announcement, Lynn’s own words: “Among the accomplishments I…

  • oskope.com – a potental catalogue interface?

    —

    by

    Paul R. Pival
    in ,

    Just learned about the oSkope visual search engine, currently searching Amazon, eBay, Flickr and Youtube.  Kind of fun to play with – here’s a quick screencast. Would a display like this make it more "fun" to use the library catalogue? Technorati Tags: oskope