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Twitter resources in Education

An interesting list of tips, apps, and resources for teachers on Twitter (100 of them). May be more geared toward K-12 but still some good ideas for the higher ed crowd.
I’m playing with the idea of a session for my faculty.

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] April 3rd, 2009 | Comments Off

How librarians can use Google Book Search

Steve Ostrem at Library Journal wrote a nice article on how librarians can use Google Book Search for reference, research and collection development.
Particularly interesting, and new, is the “popular passages” search, the subject headings, the ability to clip and paste from public-domain works and the personalization options now offered via “My Library” with a [...]

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] March 31st, 2009 | Comments Off

Ada Lovelace Day

Today, March 24th, is Ada Lovelace Day. It is an international day that wants to draw attention to women excelling in technology.
I would like to highlight two women here that I admire for their technological skills. I also have the pleasure of knowing them personally and, bonus, they’re librarians!

Jill Hurst-Wahl is an expert on [...]

2, 000 000th document in IEEE Xplore

Brian C Gray shared this morning that the IEEE Xplore database reached two million documents this month.
The two millionth article loaded into IEEE Xplore is “Intelligent Packet Dropping for Optimal Energy-Delay Tradeoffs in Wireless Downlinks,” by Michael J. Neely from the University of Southern California. It appears in the March issue of IEEE Transactions on [...]

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] March 19th, 2009 | Comments Off

Comments to libraries

I have seen two examples recently of libraries reaching out to their users to gather their comments.

Concordia University Libraries, in Montréal, Qué is using a web form (?) to gather comments and publishes responses via a blog. Questions/comments and answers are coming at a good clip. The Libraries administration actually uses the comments to improve [...]

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] March 17th, 2009 | Comments Off

2009 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards

The American Institute of Architects selected eight recipients for the 2009 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards. For each winning library, I tried to link to the website and to project details, via the architects’ sites and/or via the Architectural Record, if available.
Arabian Library, Scottsdale Public Library, Scottsdale, Arizona
richard+bauer architecture, LLC
about the project
C.V. Starr East Asian [...]

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] March 6th, 2009 | Comments Off

ARL Statement to scholarly publishers on the global economic crisis

A little late, but interesting reading, ARL published mid-February a statement to publishers regarding research libraries and the global economic crisis. The document lists a few of the effects the economic crisis has on research libraries:

current and future -possibly permanent -budget cuts
cancellation of ongoing commitments
bigger preference of electronic over print
shortening of “long tail” collection development
changes [...]

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] March 6th, 2009 | Comments Off

Big changes for McGraw-Hill Digital Engineering Library

McGraw-Hill announced a major revision of its Digital Engineering Library. The new site will be called AccessEngineering and the URL (http://accessengineeringlibrary.com) will be activated March 9th 2009.
The new site will offer new features and enhancements, including:

New graphical user interface: state-of-the art functionality streamlines access to content and reader
New taxonomy book view: the website is [...]

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] March 6th, 2009 | Comments Off

Going underground for scholarly content

Brian Scott Mathews over at The Ubiquitous Librarian made some very interesting looking into the underground market for academic materials via illegal file sharing sites like bit torrent. Apparently, his fictional research brought up big time reference titles like the CRC handbooks, the entire Referex engineering e-book collection, Harvard Business Cases, textbooks and tutti quanti. [...]

Harvard Libraries Provost calls for improved libraries

Harvard University Provost Steven E. Hyman created a committee charged with improving the efficiency of the university’s library system. Since Harvard’s creation in 1638, no less than 75 different units have been instituted and have evolved “organically”. Some branches are autonomous, other services are centralized. The desired outcome would be “recommendations to improve the strength [...]

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] March 4th, 2009 | Comments Off

Best Sci-Tech Books of 2008

Library Journal just published its list of best 2008 sci-tech books. Something for everyone.
(Thanks John Dupuis for the heads-up)

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] March 4th, 2009 | Comments Off

Twitter and conference meetings

As a collateral to my February 25th post, Peter Bromberg at the Library Garden blog, posts about Twitter etiquette at conference business meetings. The good and the (very) ugly. Although, sometimes I think new Twitter users don’t always realize the permanent nature of their tweets. And how very public they are.

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] February 27th, 2009 | Comments Off

Twitter and presentations

Very interesting post about the use of Twitter during presentations, by both attendees and presenter, over at Pistachio. Which brings a host of issues and interrogations: is it rude to look at a laptop instead of the presenter? why are the attendees twittering? Are they interested or bored? (enerving for the presenter) Should the presenter [...]

Peer to Patent Project

The USPTO launched the Peer to Patent Project in June 2007. The Project permits the public to actually take part in the patenting process by submitting prior art and commentary relevant to the claims of pending patent applications in certain classes. These classes are Technology Center 2100 (“Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security”) or Technology [...]

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] February 24th, 2009 | Comments Off

List of libraries on Twitter

Found via – where else – Twitter, a list of libraries that tweet (thanks @CanuckLibrarian for the heads up and Lindy Brown for the actual list.)

by Catherine Lavallee-Welch [ Full Article ] February 20th, 2009 | Comments Off

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