February Library Tech Roundup

We’re debuting a new series this month: a roundup inspired by our friends at Hack Library School! Each month, the LITA bloggers will share selected library tech links, resources, and ideas that resonated with us. Enjoy – and don’t hesitate to tell us what piqued your interest recently in the comments section!

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Brianna M.

Get excited: This month I discovered some excellent writing related to research data management.

• If you’ve ever wondered… –>  What Drives Academic Data Sharing?
• Excellent, spot on advice from Celia Emmelhainz –> Things You Can Do As a Library Student to Prepare for a Career as a Data Librarian
• UW-Madison unveiled our new electronic lab notebook this past fall and we’re continuing to educate the community about it.  –>  Manage Your Data with LabArchives
• Stacy always teaches me stuff. This time it’s about the tool Docker.  –>  A Gentle Introduction to Docker for Reproducible Research
• More and more federal agencies are releasing requirements following February 2013’s OSTP memo. These institutions are doing a great job aggregating that information.  –>  Oregon State University  |  Carnegie Mellon  |  Columbia University

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Bryan B.

The lion’s share of my work revolves around our digital library system, and lately I’ve been waxing philosophical about what role these systems play in our culture. I don’t have a concrete answer yet, but I’m getting there.

• Lawrence Lessig is pretty much the coolest person ever. He’s the co-founder of the Creative Commons license we use pretty much every week on our blog, and he puts his money where is mouth is when it comes to the books he’s written. I’m currently reading The Future of Ideas and Free Culture, both of which are freely available under a CC license.
• Europe is doing a stellar job of raising public awareness about the importance of the public domain. Organizations like Communia and Europeana are putting a lot of effort into initiatives like the Public Domain Manifesto. Let’s hope it spreads across the pond.
• There’s a horse in that car!

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John K.

I’m just unburying myself from a major public computer revamp (new PCs, new printers, new reservation/printing system, mobile printing, etc.) so here are a few things I’ve found interesting:

• Eric Hellman from Unglue.it writes about Creative Commons licensing and how “Free” can help a book do its job
• An interview with David Weingerber of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab –> Is There a Library-Sized Hole in the Internet?
• David Lee King wants suggests your strategic plan needs a technology plan –> Which Comes First – Strategic Plan or Technology Plan?
• If you’ve got some time, this is an excellent 53-page white paper from Marshall Breeding (PDF link on the page) –> NISO White Paper Explores the Future of Library Resource Discovery

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Lauren H.

This month my life is starting to revolve around online learning.  Here’s what I’ve been reading:

• So much video… –> BYU-Idaho Supports Online Learning with Automated Video Transcoding
• Virtual reality… –> Distance Learning Taps in to Virtual Reality Technology
• Students might not like this, but school doesn’t have to stop for snow!… –> For Some Schools, Learning Doesn’t Stop on Snow Days
• And because all of this is really hard to do on your own… –> Why You Now Need a Team to Create and Deliver Learning

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Leanne O.

I’ve been immersed in metadata and cataloguing, so here’s a grab bag of what’s intrigued me lately:

• Although my university doesn’t collect video games, I know well that cataloguing rules often lag behind technological developments – A History of Video Game Cataloging in U.S. Libraries
• Wish I’d thought of this project… “What Am I Fighting For?”: Creating a Controlled Vocabulary for Video Game Plot Metadata
• To get my brain off gaming.  I’m new to Viewshare, but it seems pretty neat … Visual Representation of Academic Communities through Viewshare
• LibraryThing is looking snazzier than most library catalogues, yet again: New “More Like This” for LibraryThing for Libraries

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Lindsay C.

Hey, LITA Blog readers. Are you managing multiple projects? Have you run out of Post-it (R) notes? Are the to-do lists not cutting it anymore? Me too. The struggle is real. Here are a set of totally unrelated links to distract all of us from the very pressing tasks at hand. I mean inspire us to finish the work.

• A pair of retired scholars have meticulously reconstructed a prestigious book collection online (and it’s a thing of beauty) –> Reassembling William Morris’ Library
• CRASSH is hosting a dreamboat of a conference exploring the total system of knowledge and how new technology is bringing us closer to making it a reality –> The Total Archive:Dreams of Universal Knowledge from the Encyclopedia to Big Data
•  Michael Schofield lets us know what we’ve always suspected was true.  –> “Social” the Right Way is a Timesuck