
Library of Congress Now On iTunes, YouTube, Twitter, Blog…06.30.09

30 06 2009

493px-US-LibraryOfCongress-BookLogo.svg

The Library of Congress recently started its own YouTube channel. Here is the latest LC update on their Library 2.0 activities from Hey U, Tune In: The Library Is Now on iTunes U:

Blog. Twitter. YouTube.  iTunes.  Yeah, we speak Web 2.0.

You nation’s Library has millions of stories to tell, so we’re trying to tell them as many places and to as many people as possible–whether on our own website or elsewhere.  And now you can add another biggie to the list: iTunes U.

For those who don’t know, iTunes U is an area of the iTunes Store offering free education audio and video content from many of the world’s top universities and other institutions. (The iTunes application is needed to access iTunes U, and is a free download from www.apple.com/itunes.)

The Library’s iTunes U page launched today with a great deal of content, with much more to come.  (Link here, opens in iTunes.)  A nice bonus, for those in the know, is that the content is downloadable and even includes materials such as PDFs…”





FREE – “Effective Practice in a Digital Age”…06.30.09

30 06 2009

Effective Practice in a Digital Age

Effective Practice in a Digital Age is designed for those in further and higher education who aim to enhance the student learning experience through apt and imaginative uses of technology. A visually rich publication, Effective Practice in a Digital Age outlines key aspects of designing learning in a technology-rich context and is structured to address the needs of experienced practitioners as well as those new to technology-based learning and teaching – the ten newly researched case studies offer a choice of pathways reflecting the diversity of approaches taken by practitioners in current UK practice..”

“…The text of Effective Practice in a Digital Age can be downloaded in two file formats:

jiscbluelogo





“Library Websites for Mobile Devices”…06.20.09

30 06 2009

opaciphone

Here is an excerpt from the Centered Librarian‘s post Library Websites for Mobile Devices which is worth reading completely:

“The Mobile Libraries Blog has an executive summary of the University of Cambridge’s M-Libraries: Information Use On The Move report from the Arcadia Programme. While there’s a substantial list of ways to integrate mobile devices with libraries to better serve patrons, one of the simplest things – ‘Ensuring that the library website is accessible and will resize to smaller screens…to be ready for increasing numbers of netbook users and mobile internet users in the next few years’ – may be the most difficult thing for some institutions. The difficulty is not technical, but a combination of internal politics and marketing…”





NEW – “Twitter for Busy People”…06.20.09

30 06 2009

twitter-busy

Mashable! today highlighted “Twitter for Busy People” which it describes as:

“Spending too much time reading friends’ Tweets? Only got 5 mins and you’d need an hour to get through em all?

No worries: you can now speed-read your way through your Tweet reading with Twitter For Busy People, a new interface for Twitter created by the team at Bluejava. The idea is that you can skim all the people you’re following and see the latest tweet from each…”





New from the Library of Congress – “Bagit: Transferring Content for Digital Preservation”…0.30.09

30 06 2009

digital_content_strategy

The Library of Congress has posted the video “Bagit: Transferring Content for Digital Preservation” which is worth a look.

View transcript

POSTED DATE: 06/24/2009

RUNNING TIME: 3:14

DESCRIPTION:
The Library of Congress’s steadily growing digital collections arrive primarily over the network rather than on hardware media. But that data transfer can be difficult because different organizations have different policies and technologies.

The Library – with the California Digital Library and Stanford University – has developed guidelines for creating and moving standardized digital containers, called ‘bags.’ A bag functions like a physical envelope that is used to send content through the mail but with bags, a user sends content from one computer to another.

Bags have a sparse, uncomplicated structure that transcends differences in institutional data, data architecture, formats and practices. A bag’s minimal but essential metadata is machine readable, which makes it easy to automate ingest of the data. Bags can be sent over computer networks or physically moved using portable storage devices.

Bags have built-in inventory checking, to help ensure that content transferred intact. Bags are flexible and can work in many different settings, including situations where the content is located in more than one place. This video describes the preparation and transfer of data over the network in bags.”





“The Future of Library User Experience”…06.29.09

29 06 2009

The Librarian is IN posted today Thinking Like a Patron is excerpted below followed by the Future of Library User Experience by Bolt Peters referred to in the post.

“Thinking like a patron can be really hard to do.  The longer we work in libraries the more entrenched we get in the lingo and practices of our business.  But that doesn’t make it any easier for our users.

I recently attended the ULC Webinar The Future of Library User Experience…  Nate Bolt, a user experience expert, gave the main presentation, which was great as he freely admits he hasn’t used a library in years, so was able to look at library web sites with fresh eyes.  He stressed that when organizing our collections and websites, we need to place people before systems and pay attention to intuition rather than how things should logically be arranged.  Ignore opinions – just research behavior.

Nate advised that if you really want to make your library user friendly (physically and in cyber space) you should watch three people use your website.  And to give you a taste of what it feels like to be confronted with a new resource, he suggests you try to create a new web page and use an unfamiliar open source tool.  Pay attention to how intuitive it is.  Does the arrangement make sense?  Is it easy to figure out where you want to go and how to do something?

He’s also in favor of using an open architecture so people can customize and manipulate your resources and data to suit their needs.  One great tip – put your marketing (program notices, new services…) on the results pages since this is where patrons will spend most of their time.  And of course, also put links to similar materials, comments and reviews there…”





“Bored with the Internet”…06.29.09

29 06 2009

From XKCD, “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language“:

bored_with_the_internet








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