Librarian X

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.

In a stroke of excellent timing (as I’m beginning to put together training materials), Springshare has added a beta image upload feature to Libguides.

Users can upload images (in any web-recognizable format, i.e. gif, jpg, png) from their computer into the LibGuides boxes via the Rich Text Editor, and the images will be stored on LibGuides servers.

I really love using Libguides, but the lack of integrated image uploading has been the one inconvenient feature for most of the librarians I’ve worked with.  At my previous library we had to find awkward workarounds like creating unpublished web pages containing their images since there wasn’t easy ftp access to the web server for most people.  This is going to be a welcome addition to an excellent product.

Cindi Trainor included my “How to make a Libguide” page on her Librarian’s Guide to LibGuides in the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase.  Thanks, Cindi!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but have obviously had a busy summer so far.  I did eventually get around to creating that guide to free audiobooks that I have been meaning to do for a while:

Audiobooks Guide

Short version: students leaving for break always want audiobooks, we don’t have many.  I listen to a lot of audio fiction, hence the idea.  If you have suggestions for additions, please post ‘em.

This is also a link to our new Libguides setup, which won’t officially debut until August.  So far I love Libguides, and I’ll blog about it soon.  (After I finish getting ready to train our staff on it.)