The Distant Librarian

Category: Web/Tech

  • Federal Register 2.0

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    Paul R. Pival
    in

    Cool, the Federal Register is now available in XML! “With an XML edition, independent organizations can reorganize the Register’s contents in ways that are more meaningful to you and address your personal interests; track issues that are likely to affect your community or your profession; and even engage in real-time public discussions about its contents…

  • What IS Google Wave?

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Last week I got my invite to Google Wave, and Chad Haefele and I played with it for a little bit (he's the only other person I know with an account so far, even though I've sent out a few invites of my own).  It's kinda slick, but we were both just poking sticks at…

  • Post-holiday link dump

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Some miscellaneous links you may find of interest: Co-Browsing Tools: Guide To The Best Online Services Five Best Video-Sharing Sites Newswire Opinion: Libraries Clash with Harvard Business Publishing on Deep-Linking The undiscussed danger to libraries in the Google Books Settlement: A warning from library law expert Peter Hirtle Sony to link Readers with libraries, allow…

  • Use embedr for video/screencast playlists

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    Paul R. Pival
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    A couple of months ago my colleague Carmen pointed me to Embedr, “a free service that lets anyone create a custom playlist of videos from the top video sites on the web.”  Finally had a chance to take a look at it and quite like it.  Basically you can feed it the URLs of videos…

  • 7 Things You Should Know About Microblogging

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    Paul R. Pival
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    The latest in the Educause 7 Things You Should Know About… series covers Microblogging (aka Twitter). Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media—on the Internet. Microblogging offers a portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many and has captured…

  • Download Your YouTube Videos Legally

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Amit at Digital Inspiration points out that you can now download your YouTube videos legally.  But the emphasis is on YOUR videos.  The best tool I know for being able to download all YouTube videos, and in the format of your choice, is KickYouTube.

  • The Google Wave Highlight Reel

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Gina Trapani at Smarterware has a great post where she's chopped out the highlights of an 80-minute presentation showcasing Google Wave.  Now you can see what's particularly cool with this future tool in less than 8 minutes.

  • Metrics on mobile web usage

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    Paul R. Pival
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    The Making mobile web sites with Drupal blog points to a report showing some surprising statistics on mobile usage.  The report comes from a company (AdMob) that serves ads on mobile websites, and shows, among other things, that "The iPhone OS had 8% market share of handset sales in 2008, but generated 43% share of…

  • First Impressions

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    Paul R. Pival
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    I finally got around to reading a couple of posts I'd squirreled away, and they turn out to be somewhat related. Brian Mathews posts about 5 next-gen library catalogs and 5 students: their initial impressions.  Important to us here at the UofC as we continue to beta test Summon.  While admittedly not scientific, there are…

  • OCLC takes the OPAC to the cloud

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    Paul R. Pival
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    Damn, this is shaping up to be an interesting year in libraryland.  OCLC has announced that they're going to offer a fully online ILS (Integrated Library System).  As in, no desktop client for acquisitions or circulation, and Worldcat.org as the public interface.  The official press release is here, Andrew Pace has a short piece, and…