In September, I wrote a post about new collaborative technology from Crestron. We installed AirMedia in our library, and we are now looking at AirTame as a possible next generation version of collaborative technology. It works on all mobile devices. AirMedia does this too, but the tablet features have been less than ideal. Airtame was able to raise more money than expected and is currently working to scale its production. My university is also considering how collaborative technologies can be used in the classroom. This type of technology will allow for enhanced group work, enhanced presentations, and the instructor being able to move around the classroom to work with different students instead of being tied to the front of the classroom. As technology continues to move toward mobile and wearable, the ability to show a group what is on a small screen will become more important in both education and…
Category: General information
Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself – Volume 5
To paraphrase Outkast, it’s the return of the Wreckster, LITA Blog readers. It’s been months since last I typed an installment, but not for lack of enthusiasm or material. If this is your first Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself, let me explain. TYBYWY is a curated assortment of tools and resources for aspiring library technologists at all levels of experience. I focus on webinars, MOOCs, and other free/low-cost options for learning, growing, and increasing tech proficiency. Thank you for reading! Project Management Tools Through the course of a recent group project, I’ve had the opportunity to explore a number or project management tools, applications, and methods. This TYBYWY is for my fellow compulsive to-do list writers. Consider it a love letter. Level Up I recently converted to Habit RPG. As you know, gamification is an ongoing interest of mine. Habit RPG literally gamifies your life, giving game mechanics (leveling…
Job Opening: LITA Executive Director
The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association, seeks a dynamic, entrepreneurial, forward-thinking Executive Director. This is a fulfilling and challenging job that affords national impact on library technologists. As the successful candidate, you will be not only organized, financially savvy, and responsive, but also comfortable with technological change, project management, community management, and organizational change. Interested in applying? For a full description and requirements, visit http://bit.ly/LITA_ED Search Timeline We will advertise for the position in April, conduct phone interviews in early May, and conduct in-person interviews with the top candidates at ALA Headquarters in Chicago, mid to late May. Ideally, the candidate would start in June (perhaps just before ALA Annual Conference), and there would be a one-month overlap with current Executive Director Mary Taylor, who retires July 31. Search Committee Mary Ghikas, ALA Senior Associate Executive Director Dan Hoppe, ALA Director of Human Resources Keri Cascio, ALCTS Executive Director…
Let’s Hack a Collaborative Library Website!
A LITA Preconference at 2015 ALA Annual Register online for the ALA Annual Conference and add a LITA Preconference Friday, June 26, 2015, 8:30am – 4:00pm In this hackathon attendees will learn to use the Bootstrap front-end framework and the Git version control system to create, modify and share code for a new library website. Expect a friendly atmosphere and a creative hands-on experience that will introduce you to web literacy for the 21st century librarian. The morning will consist of in-depth introductions to the tools, while the afternoon will see participants split into working groups to build a single collaborative library website. What is Bootstrap Bootstrap is an open-source, responsive designed, and front-end web framework that can be used to create complete website redesigns to rapid prototyping. It is useful for many library web applications, such as customizing LibGuides (version 2) or creating responsive sites. This workshop will give attendees…
Creating Better Tutorials Through User-Centered Instructional Design
A LITA Preconference at 2015 ALA Annual Register online for the ALA Annual Conference and add a LITA Preconference Friday, June 26, 2015, 8:30am – 4:00pm Have you wanted to involve users as you design interactive e-learning, but aren’t sure where to start? In this unique, hands-on workshop, you will learn the core and emerging principles of instructional and user experience design and apply what you have learned to design, develop, and test a tutorial you create. The three dynamic and experienced workshop facilitators will cover topics including design thinking, user-centered pedagogy, user interface prototyping, and intercept usability testing while providing hands-on practice in each area. Check out these 3 tutorials examples: Popular vs. Scholarly Sources Academic Search Complete Locating Manuscripts in Special Collections Presenters: Yvonne Mery, Instructional Design Librarian, University of Arizona Yvonne co-authored the book, Online by Design: the Essentials of Creating Information Literacy Courses. She has co-authored…
Is Your Library In?
In my previous post, I discussed learning XSLT for my current Indiana University Digital Library Program internship. Along the way, I explained a little about TEI/XML, as well. Thinking about these tools led me to consider all of the different markup and programming languages, and tools that go into building a digital library. While my Guide to Digital Library Tools is kept for another day, I wanted to explore one platform in particular. Omeka. IU hosts a fantastic series called Digital Library Brown Bags on Wednesdays throughout the school year. I’ve attended many and see an Omeka usage pattern emerging. The most recent Brown Bag was titled Designing the Digital Scholarly Commons: “In Mrs. Goldberg’s Kitchen: Jewish Life in Interwar Lodz” given by Halina Goldberg, Associate Professor of Music at the Jacobs School of Music, and Adam Hochstetter, Web Developer for the Jacobs School of Music. After seeing many projects utilizing…
In Praise of Anaconda
Do you want to learn to code? Of course you do, why wouldn’t you? Programming is fun, like solving a puzzle. It helps you think in a computational and pragmatic way about certain problems, allowing you to automate those problems away with a few lines of code. Choosing to learn programming is the first step on your path, and the second is choosing a language. These days there are many great languages to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The right language for you depends heavily on what you want to do (as well as what language your coworkers are using). If you don’t have any coder colleagues and can’t decide on a language, I would suggest taking a look at Python. It’s mature, battle-tested, and useful for a just about anything. I work across many different domains (often in the same day) and Python is a…
Agile Development: Estimation and Scheduling
In my last post, I discussed the creation of Agile user stories. This time I’m going to talk about what to do with them once you have them. There are two big steps that need to be completed in order to move from user story creation to development: effort estimation and prioritization. Each poses its own problems. Estimating Effort Because Agile development relies on flexibility and adaptation, creating a bottom-up effort estimation analysis is both difficult and impractical. You don’t want to spend valuable time analyzing a piece of functionality up front only to have the implementation details change because of something that happens earlier in the development process, be it a change in another story, customer feedback, etc. Instead, it’s better to rely on your development team’s expertise and come up with top-down estimates that are accurate enough to get the development process started. This may at times make you feel uncomfortable,…
Join LITA’s Imagineering IG at ALA Annual
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Breanne Kirsch. During the upcoming 2015 ALA Annual Conference, LITA’s Imagineering Interest Group will host the program “Unknown Knowns and Known Unknowns: How Speculative Fiction Gets Technological Innovation Right and Wrong.” A panel of science fiction and fantasy authors will discuss their work and how it connects with technological developments that were never invented and those that came about in unimagined ways. Tor is sponsoring the program and bringing authors John Scalzi, Vernor Vinge, Greg Bear, and Marie Brennan. Baen Books is also sponsoring the program by bringing Larry Correia to the author panel. John Scalzi wrote the Old Man’s War series and more recently, Redshirts, which won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Vernor Vinge is known for his Realtime/Bobble and Zones of Thought Series and a number of short fiction stories. Greg Bear has written a number of series,…
Diagrams Made Easy with LucidChart
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Marlon Hernandez For the past year, across four different classes and countless bars, I have worked on an idea that is quickly becoming my go-to project for any Master of Information Science assignment; the Archivist Beer Vault (ABV) database. At first it was easy to explain the contents: BEER! After incorporating more than one entity the explanation grew a bit murky: ME: So remember my beer database? Well now it includes information on the brewery, style AND contains fictional store transactions WIFE: Good for you honey. ME: Yeah unfortunately that means I need to add a few transitive prop… I lost your attention after beer, didn’t I? Which is a fair reaction since trying to describe the intricacies of abstract ideas such as entity relationship diagrams require clear-cut visuals. However, drawing these diagrams usually requires either expensive programs like Microsoft Visio (student rate $269) or…