Category: Miscellaneous
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Wonderful visualizations from Traverse Area District Library
Serveral weeks ago as a result of a post by Michael Stephens I was introduced to this awesome page of usage visualizations at the Traverse Area District Library (Traverse City, MI). I had a great email exchange with the developer, Bill Rockwood, about how he put it together, and he's since posted a page outlining…
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Expert panel to look into the state of libraries & archives in Canada
I happened across an interesting article in a recent CAUT (Canadian Association of University Teachers) Bulletin: Expert panel to look into the state of libraries & archives in Canada. "The panel’s final report on libraries and archives is due in the fall of 2014." Don't miss the link at the bottom of the page to http://www.canadaspastmatters.ca/, which…
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2012 – my year in reading
In 2011 for the first time I started tracking the books I was reading, and in January of 2012 I posted about what and how I'd read during 2011. Here's my post for what and how I read in 2012. In 2011 I tracked my reads in a basic text file in Evernote. That ended…
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Still thinking about reporting available seats
Back in November I posted about my desire for some way to reliably monitor and report available study seats within the library. I recently heard about Pinoccio, an Indiegogo project, and suspect it might do the trick! It's a very small Arduino board with an optional WiFi board. If one plugged a motion sensor, or…
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TFDL hosting Global Game Jam
Nice to finally see our new library here at the U of Calgary hosting non-traditional events, just as this year's edition of Global Game Jam. If you're in the Calgary area, why not participate?
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Thinking about available seats
We've got the whole workstation availability thing licked, but I want to be able to show our users which study seats are available here in the TFDL. That's one of the top two most common complaints here; that students spend too much time wandering around looking for a place to sit/study. Here's my stream of…
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PSA – Zombie Season Approaches
We’re within a week of Halloween, so the zombie references are popping out of the woodwork. First up, CommonCraft has updated their previous video, Zombies Explained: Next, from the Zombie Research Society, we have a scientific look at what might be going on in a zombie’s brain to make it a zombie: Zombies seem to…
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Calgary Mini Maker Faire = Awesome fun!
I took the kids down to the East Village today for the inaugural Calgary Mini Maker Faire, and we all had a blast! I've been wanting to get involved somehow in the maker movement for quite some time, but never made the effort to get down to our local hacker lab, Protospace. That'll probably change…
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Maternal Falcon
One of the non-work-related pleasures I have is assisting with the webcam we have pointing at the Peregrine falcons that nest in the building next to the library here at the U of Calgary. This year we have triplets, and if you've ever wondered whether a bird of prey makes a caring mother, here's an…