Librarian X

Me, August 2008:

Chicago Public Library, summer 2009:

I’m not saying anything, I’m just saying.

My friend Colleen Harris called my attention to a new bibliographic manager program called Mendeley. I spent a little time trying it out today. I want to stress that this was a brief test run, and these are, as the title of the post says, just first impressions.

Mendeley, presently in version 0.6 beta, is free (but not open source), and runs on Windows, MacOS or Linux. I tried out the Windows version. It’s got two components: a separate desktop application like EndNote, and web-based storage for references. Add a bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and you get a somewhat Zotero-like experience of saving references from many databases and other sources like Amazon and Google Scholar. (It didn’t work with my library’s catalog, but did work with Worldcat.org.) You can save either single citations or pick from a list of search results.

It took me a moment to realize that citations were being saved to my online Mendeley library, and wouldn’t appear in the desktop application until I pressed the Sync Library button. This is a different experience than I’m used to, but wasn’t much of a hassle. The desktop client looks a lot like the Zotero interface (but outside of the browser window, obviously), and if you’re used to either EndNote or Zotero it will seem familiar and easy to use. If you’re using Mendeley on multiple computers it should be easy to keep your libraries in sync, a feature that Zotero 2.0 has but EndNote lacks entirely.

There’s also a Word plugin that installs as part of the setup. It didn’t work for me at first, and gave me an error message requiring me to reboot before it would work. The instructions in the error message were full of horrible spelling mistakes, which is a superficial complaint but didn’t really inspire me with confidence. Once I rebooted, it worked fine, and the process of inserting citations and creating bibliographies is just about identical to Zotero and EndNote.

Mendeley is clearly geared toward academics: there’s an online profile associated with your web account that includes publications, grants, and classes. It fills in suggestions for the name of your institution as you fill out your profile, and I had a hard time forcing it to accept “Georgia State University” instead of “University of Georgia - Georgia State University” (we’re a separate institution, not a unit of UGA, as Mendeley seems to think all of our state institutions are). There’s a My Publications group in the desktop client, and you can add publication credits to your Mendeley CV by dragging references here.

My first impression of Mendeley is that it’s easier to use than EndNote, and probably not quite as easy as Zotero. It’s not quite as mature as either product, but casual users and students probably wouldn’t notice many lacking features. The missing ability to import citations from library catalogs may bother a lot of potential users, but searching Worldcat or Amazon is a pretty easy workaround. The online storage puts it one up on EndNote, as it’s a lot easier to use than EndNote Web, and users who prefer EndNote to Zotero might want to consider Mendley as a free replacement. I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

Mendeley: How it Works

I just put up my first exhibit, on virtual worlds and video games. It’ll be in the GSU Library over the summer. I selected the books and wrote the accompanying text, and our awesome designer Christian Steinmetz created the posters to accompany it. I’m particularly fond of my character sheet.

A full list of the books is on the GSU Library blog. (And thanks again to my friends who contributed suggestions.) I tried to choose a variety of books from different disciplines to show that scholars in many areas (art, business, anthropology, gender studies) are writing about games and VWs, and to give students ideas about how they might write about gaming for a variety of classes.

I’ve been working on the ALA Electronic Participation Task Force for a few months, and this week Cindi Trainor blogged about our recommendations on the ALA TechSource blog.

At present it’s called the EParticipation Task Force Recommendations. Hopefully it’ll get a better name at some point. Essentially this is a toolkit of free and cheap options to include remote participants in conference events. We’ve got links for different kinds of participation (audio, video, documents, etc) and different circumstances (one speaker, many, etc), and reasonably easy instructions for all options. This isn’t just for ALA members — it’s relevant and useful for anyone. I wrote the bit on podcasting (naturally) and SlideShare.

We’ll probably be talking about professional development without a budget on the next Adventures in Library Instruction episode. If you have questions or issues you think would be interesting to include, let me know.

EParticipation Task Force Recommendations

One of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow, just put up some Youtube videos discussing students and media literacy. I’m embedding this one since it’s the most directly relevant to library instruction, but it’s worth listening to the whole series (on his blog). I really love his ideas for assignments using Wikipedia.

If you’re having trouble figuring out the point of this whole Twitter and Friendfeed thing (or if you’ve never heard of Friendfeed since it hasn’t had a media blitz yet), check out this article on Library Journal by my friends Laura Carscaddon and Colleen Harris: “Working the Social: Twitter and FriendFeed.”

They do a great job of condensing and explaining the point of both services, and how and why you might want to use them.

Episode 3 of the Adventures in Library Instruction podcast is up. In case you don’t subscribe to that feed, here it is for your convenience.

We were serious about wanting some new voices on the show, and we got distance librarian Dana Longley of Empire State College SUNY to join us for this episode. It went great, despite some Skype glitches, and I think we’ll continue to invite special guest stars.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a sort of open-source class curriculum called “Teaching Copyright” in response to the RIAA’s “Campus Downloading” site, which has a video and informational documents about the dangers of downloading free music. The RIAA offers a free DVD for educators.

The RIAA’s material:

• Doesn’t identify the sponsor of the site
• Makes blanket statements that downloading music without the copyright holder’s permission is illegal
• Doesn’t mention fair use, public domain, or Creative Commons
• Warns students of the risks of being sued or expelled, without identifying the RIAA as the plaintiff in these lawsuits.
• Links to lots of sites that sell music by RIAA recording artists.

The EFF’s material:

• Clearly identifies the organization behind the site and their agenda
• Discusses the four factors of fair use, the public domain, and illustrates legal examples of reusing digital materials
• Clarifies the stakeholders on multiple sides of controversies in copyright and peer-to-peer file sharing.

Did you ever use sites like martinlutherking.org (I won’t link to it because I don’t want to boost its Google ranking) to demonstrate bias and critical evaluation? Wouldn’t it be a great information literacy exercise to have students analyze the two curricula? And maybe teach them something about copyright and information use in the bargain?

I’ve ordered one of the RIAA’s DVDs to use in class next year.

This is the class “handout” for my webcast presentation “Podcasting for Libraries,” June 2 at 2pm Eastern. If I’ve left off anything you’d find useful, leave a comment and I’ll update this post.

Overviews and definitions

Podcasting in Plain English video

Wikipedia: Podcast

Puckett, J. (2008, February 10). Podcasting in Academic Libraries. Jason Puckett.net. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://jasonpuckett.net/projects/podcasting-in-academic-libraries/

Wikipedia: Web feeds

RSS in Plain English video

What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part I

Software: recording and podcatching

Audacity (free, Mac/Windows/Linux, audio recording/editing)

Camtasia ($299, Mac/Windows, audio/video recording/editing)

Garageband (part of iLife suite, $79 [cheaper at Amazon], Mac only, audio recording/editing)

iTunes (free, Mac/Windows, podcatcher)

Juice (free, Mac/Windows/Linux, podcatcher)

PodNova (free, Mac/Windows/Linux, podcatcher)

Hardware

I’m not an audiophile by any means, but these are microphones that have worked well for my podcast recording. If your institution has a media production expert, they can probably give you better advice on alternatives than I could!

Blue Snowball microphone

Logitech USB headset

Software: publishing

Wordpress
But just about any blog platform will work. I’m presently publishing a podcast on Blogspot, and I’ve briefly tested podcasting from Typepad as well.

Podpress
This free Wordpress plugin allows you to easily add podcast media files to your blog, and adds a nice playback button to the page when published.

iTunes U
Information on the ITU program from Apple.

Feedburner
For analyzing traffic to your podcast’s RSS feed.

Podsafe music

Internet Archive
Much of their audio collection is copyright-free or Creative Commons licensed.

Podsafe Audio

Podsafe Music Network

Magnatune
This online music label licenses all their music for free use in noncommercial podcasts.

Library Podcasts

“Podcasting” at Library Success Wiki

Emory Library Survival Guide podcast

Tisch Talks

Arizona State U Library Channel

Worthington Libraries programming podcasts

U of Toronto iSchool podcast

Dekalb County Public Library

Hopkinton School booktalks

Ohio U Library Tours

Recommended Reading

Braun, L. (2007). Listen up!: podcasting for schools and libraries. Medford N.J.: Information Today.

Colombo, G., & Franklin, C. (2005). Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting. Que.

Deal, A. (2007, June 4). Podcasting: A Teaching with Technology White Paper. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://connect.educause.edu/blog/jklittle/podcastingateachingw/44653.

Griffey, J. (2007). Podcast 1 2 3. Library Journal, 132(11), 32-34.

Mizrachi, D., & Bedoya, J. (2007). LITE Bites: broadcasting bite-sized library instruction. Reference Services Review, 35(2), 249-256. doi: 10.1108/00907320710749164.

Stephens, M. (2005). Libraries Get Podcasting. Library Journal, 130, 24.

Williams, B. (2007). Educator’s Podcast Guide. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Worcester, L., & Barker, E. (2006). Podcasting: Exploring the Possibilities for Academic Libraries. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 13(3), 87-91.

A colleague and I are presenting a Zotero workshop in a couple of weeks for faculty and grad students in the college of business. We’re hoping it will be the first of several sessions, so we came up with “research power tools” as the theme. Our library’s graphic designer Christian Steinmetz came up with this amazing promotional poster for the workshop, which I had to share. I love the robot guy for some reason.

(Click the image to embiggen.)

Image used by permission of GSU library