Librarian X

Zotero rolled out new versions of the stable and beta releases this week.  I had a bit of a glitch getting the sync function to work with this beta version, but a little digging through the Zotero forums fixed that.

More interesting is the fact that they’ve added online user profiles.  If you set up an account on the Zotero site (reserve your name!), you can suddenly upload a user picture, follow other users, and optionally make your entire library visible if you’re syncing with the Zotero server.

I hope this means that we might expect to see recommendations and citation sharing soon.  I’m looking forward to Amazon-style “researchers who liked this article also liked….”

Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley slammed the NE Library Commission over the purchase of a Playstation console and the posting of a Youtube video promoting gaming in the library.  The news story at the Lincoln Journal Star is here.  From my limited perspective, it sounds like the library spent less than $500 on equipment that can be used to put on a few years of programming.  Is that really irresponsible?

This really sounds like a case of a clueless bureaucrat to me.  Libraries have been providing media other than books for years: music, movies, software, and games.  Does anyone really not know this?  Why isn’t the headline “Creative librarians take advantage of free web media to promote programs for kids”?

The NLC drafted a great response to the auditor’s report.

Greg Schwartz has announced that he’s putting the Uncontrolled Vocabulary podcast on indefinite hold.  I wanted to take a moment to thank Greg for putting on such a great show for almost two years now: always interesting and often hilarious into the bargain.  I have always looked forward to seeing UV appear in my podcatcher when I synced up my media player on Thursday mornings.  I’m just sorry I never got around to calling in.  Thank you, Greg!

I just got the go-ahead to license our online instructional materials — tutorials, future planned podcast, etc. — with Creative Commons licenses to encourage other libraries to use and build on them.

I made the inquiry since I’m planning on starting another instructional podcast for students before spring semester is out (knock on wood) and I wanted to CC license that.  I am so impressed: I asked my boss, who asked her boss, who had a thumbs-up from GSU’s legal department within a few hours.  At no point in the chain did anyone ask “Creative what?”, which I take as a good sign for the Creative Commons project.

So this morning I went through all of my Libguides and added CC licenses.  It was possibly the geekiest thing I’ve ever been excited about.

Amazon announced the Kindle 2 this week, as you no doubt already know.  I’m really into the idea of a friendly, portable, readable e-book device, and by most accounts the Kindle is pretty cool.  But I’ve worked in libraries so long that I am just way out of the habit of buying books regularly, e- or paper.  I just can’t see laying out almost $400 for a device that will allow me to spend $10 a pop on proprietary e-books that I can’t move to any of my other devices.

When someone releases a Kindle equivalent that will allow me to save online books from my library, I’ll be lining right up — but so far every reader device I’ve heard of is so crippled by DRM that that seems unlikely at best.

Edit: For a good counterpoint (from someone who actually owns a Kindle), see Jason Griffey’s post at ALA Techsource.

My review of the book Information Literacy: Search Strategies, Tools & Resources for High School Students and College Freshmen by Zorana Ercegovac is up at The Tech Static blog.

In my review, I mentioned some technology errors that I ran across in the book, but due to Tech Static’s length requirements I didn’t expand on them.  Here are a few examples of what I meant:

• The author refers to Internet Explorer as “Microsoft Explorer” (p. 98).
• Netscape Navigator (discontinued in 2007) is cited as an example of a current browser (p. 98).  The book was written in 2008.
• This is a little unclear, but in the discussion of top-level domain names (p. 86) the author implies that .org domains are only run by non-profits and .com domains by companies (of course, anyone can buy either a .org or .com domain).
• URL typos appear from time to time: “.nrt” for “.net”, a slash instead of a dot, and so on.
• LII.org is referred to as an invisible web search tool (p. 94).  In fact everything on LII is available on the open web and indexable by Google.

As I said in my review, none of these break the usefulness of the book, and there’s nothing in my nitpicky list that would trip up a savvy student or instructor (though I would have liked to see more clarity in the discussion of TLDs).  It’s a good textbook or sourcebook if you work with upper-level high school students or new undergrads.