Category: Service
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User perceptions of the academic library and how Discovery Systems can help
I wanted to wait until the final post before mentioning Jane Burke's guest 6-part series about user perceptions of the library and how Discovery Systems can help on the InfoViews blog. Jane is Senior Vice President of ProQuest and the executive sponsor of Serials Solutions (who makes Summon). In the first four posts Jane paints a…
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7 Things You Should Know About the Modern Learning Commons
This month Educause looks at 7 Things You Should Know About the Modern Learning Commons. The learning commons, sometimes called an “information commons,” has evolved from a combination library and computer lab into a full-service learning, research, and project space. As a place where students can meet, talk, study, and use “borrowed” equipment, the learning…
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Edupunk goes mobile: Mobile library sites with zero budget
Tiffini has a great post on her blog about the importance of a mobile website for libraries, along with a couple of excellent suggestions for how YOU can do this for your library with little to no cost at all: Edupunk goes mobile: Mobile library sites with zero budget. In a nutshell, she suggests using LibGuides…
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Some great screencasting thoughts and examples
I've had a few posts floating around waiting for me to blog about them. Embedding tutorials into physical objects – Jason Fleming talks about an incident with a photocopier that prompted him to create tutorials for print, and use a QR code to guide end users of physical objects to relevant online tutorials on how…
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Hosted Proxy Servers
Today Serials Solutions announced "the industry’s first hosted proxy service: 360 Access Control". That caught my eye as a little odd, as on Dec 1, OCLC announced that EZproxy is now available as a hosted option as well. Regardless of who was first, this is probably pretty good news for the smaller institutions out there. There…
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Google knows what time it is where you are – Random Tech Tip Tuesday
This is likely very old news, but it's new to me so I thought I'd share. I just noticed that within Gmail, Google will tell you what time it currently is where the sender of an email is: A little thing, but pretty cool and potentially very useful! OK, I did my homework – Google…
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In praise of instant feedback
This past Wednesday evening I drove from Calgary to Edmonton to participate in the TAL NEXT Library Futures Symposium. That was great, but is the topic for later posts. This one is how my new car provides instant feedback to improve fuel economy, and why that makes me think we're on the right path with…
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Have a listen to EBSCO’s Text-to-Speech feature
EBSCO recently announced that they have "added text-to-speech (read aloud) support to EBSCOhost databases, including its major school and public library databases, by embedding Texthelp Systems’ SpeechStream toolbar—a valuable benefit provided at no additional cost to the user. Users will be able to take advantage of this new feature with any full-text articles available in…
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Canadian DMCA (Bill C-32) is an improvement
If it makes Access Copyright unhappy, and the Canadian Library Association happy(ish), Canada's newly-proposed Copyright Modernization Act must be doing something right. It's still got a major flaw in that it's always illegal to crack a digital lock, which effectively removes many of the rights the Bill introduces. As always, Michael Geist has all the…
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Weapon of Mass Instruction
I used to have a sticker showing some books with the text "Weapons of Mass Instruction" on my laptop, but I think this example of a Weapon of Mass Instruction is better by far!