What I Learned Today…

I am teaching the following workshops for ByWater Solutions and you’re all welcome to join in – for FREE!

Open Source in Libraries: Freedom and Community

Librarians have adopted a culture of helplessness and workarounds when it comes to our software. Open source software is a way to get freed from these chains. But open source is about more than just software, it’s about community and a philosophy of freedom. This session will give librarians the facts about open source software by introducing them to what open source is and what it means for libraries.

Join us online for one of our first two lessons (space is limited so register early).

February 16, 2012 at 10am-11:30am EST
Register Online: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/993578942

March 13, 2012 at 2pm-3:30pm EST
Register Online: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/636868638

Read the full press release.

• Heritrix
  Heritrix is the Internet Archive’s open-source, extensible, web-scale, archival-quality web crawler project.

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I am a huge fan of Zotero, so much so that I use it for all of my books and share my bibliographies online with others. Koha integrates nicely with Zotero and this tutorial video will show you exactly how.

If you have an idea for a video, please just let me know and I’ll add it to my list of things to record.

• Phixr
  Online Photo Editor

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• eXtensible Catalog
  eXtensible Catalog is open source, user-centered, next generation software for libraries. It comprises four software components that can be used independently to address a particular need or combined to provide an end-to-end discovery system to connect library users with resources.
• code.NASA
  Through this website, we will continue, unify, and expand NASA’s open source activities. The site will serve to surface existing projects, provide a forum for discussing projects and processes, and guide internal and external groups in open development, release, and contribution.
• Airports with Free Wi Fi

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I found this call for participation that I thought would be of interest to many of you. Please share your excellent training stories so that others can learn from what you’ve done.

We are looking for higher education libraries, particularly in the US, UK and in Scandinavia, which are delivering exceptionally good and/or innovative support services to research and teaching staff.

If you think your academic library is doing well in supporting research and teaching faculty, we want to hear from you! Your library could be featured as an example of good practice helping the academic library community

• to promote and develop novels ways to strengthen its relations with academic departments;
• to enhance the marketing and profiling of library services for this constituency;
• to maximise its value to research and teaching staff; and
• to demonstrate that value within and beyond the institution.

If you would like to be considered as one of our eight case studies, to be undertaken during January to March 2012, or would like more information, please contact us.

I posted earlier today about a survey for libraries to share their satisfaction with their ILS. What I didn’t know was that if you chose the library type of anything other than Academic or Public you would be kicked out of the survey.

As an SLA member and a special library supporter I find this a bit offensive. Why don’t our opinions matter? A survey of libraries in the US done by the ALA finds that there are actually more special libraries than there are academic libraries (in fact there are many many more school libraries than publics or academics and they too are excluded from this survey) – this is a big portion of our profession and sharing their opinions will help others make informed decisions about their future ILS purchases.

If you’re looking for an more inclusive survey you might want to participate in the ILS Perceptions survey over at LibraryTechnology.org (which is closing any day now so get in there quick).

This came across my email today and I thought I should share it with you all.

Library Journal is conducting a snap survey to determine library and patron satisfaction with integrated library systems (ILS) in both public and academic libraries. Are you in charge of technology, collections, or reference at your library? We are eager to hear your thoughts about the systems that you and your patrons use every day.

Please click on this link to take a very brief survey (which will only take a few minutes to answer): http://app.fluidsurveys.com/s/ILS/?link=listserv

Results of this study will appear in an upcoming LJ article in Spring 2012. Thanks for supporting our research efforts!

Refworks is an bibliography management tool used by many libraries and this tutorial will walk you through getting bib records out of Koha and into Refworks.

If you have an idea for a video, please just let me know and I’ll add it to my list of things to record.

• Symphony. An open source CMS
  XSLT-powered open source content management system

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