Author: dwakimoto

What do you do outside of work?

/ dwakimoto

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. It seems that many of us are driven to always do more at work and are defined by our work. But what, outside of work, is a part of who you are? Not to go completely philosophical on a library blog, but I think it is an important question.

In that vein, check out this short article on taking 1 hour for yourself each day. What would you do with an hour? Sometimes I think I would just sleep an extra hour, but mainly I think about all the non-work things I would be doing. I think I will try to implement this in my life; I’ll let you know how it goes.

If you follow the advice of the above article, and need something to fill your time with, check out these 10 DIY Projects from Lifehacker. These are some very cool, kind of funny, and definitely awesome DIY projects.

And lastly, for the designers and dual-monitor users among us, check out these amazing Dual Screen Desktops available through Smashing Magazine. These are so gorgeous. I can’t wait until I get my second monitor at work to apply some of these desktops to my monitors.

That is it for The Waki Librarian for this week. Sorry for the lack of updates but the end of the quarter is upon us and it has just gotten a little crazy around here. More forthcoming next week.

Energy and Productivity

/ dwakimoto

I’m pretty sure that all of my students have Spring Fever. They seem ready for summer, and they aren’t the only ones. I’m definitely ready for the quarter to be over too. And when spring hits, I always feel the need to do spring cleaning and with the days getting longer (well, technically they are still 24 hours long, but we get more sunlight each day so to me they are longer), I feel like I should be accomplishing more–both at the library and at home. In that spirit, here are a few helpful posts about getting more energy and getting things done.

This is a wonderful article on 55 Ways to get more Energy. These suggestions will hopefully help you get more energy throughout the day and be able to work (and play) more efficiently. Though I have to say I found the fact that the smell of lavender is supposed to wake you up hilarious–mainly because lavender makes me fall asleep. But luckily there are 54 other tips for me to try!

So now that you have more energy, you might just get the bug to do some spring cleaning. If so, then this article on how to organize rooms more efficiently is for you. I think the same advice would help with cleaning my office at work. I wonder how to transfer this advice into the computer realm so I might finally get around to organizing the files on my hard drive.

Do you know what your learning style is? If not you might want to check out these posts on learning styles and organization. Knowing your learning style doesn’t just help you learn more effectively, it can also help you organize your tasks, time and work. Anything, within reason, to help me get more organized is appreciated.

And now, with all this new energy and organizational skills, you will have more time to play and learn cool technology tools. Organizational tools for the win.

Have a great day and the Waki Librarian will be back soon with more library, technology and productivity fun.

Disappointing Tech, Secure Tech & Spam

/ dwakimoto

I hope everyone had a great weekend. I can’t believe that it is Monday, again. And, at my university, it is the last add/drop day of the term which means panicked students trying to get signatures all day. But today we have some technology news that will hopefully be useful and/or entertaining, so it’s all good. And, amazingly, we are going to talk about some tech news that is not from Lifehacker. I know, wonders never cease.

First, there is the very interesting list by PC Authority on the Top Ten Most Disappointing Technologies. The authors’ discussion of each product or application is very informative and the reasons for the failure of these technologies are intelligently discussed. If nothing else, it is hilarious to read about the $10,000 price tag on Apple’s Lisa computer–especially now when you can get a fairly powerful PC for under $1000. Ah, how times change.

Speaking of technologies and techniques, here is one I hope will work out–new way of catching spammers. If you haven’t already heard about this study, I suggest you read it. The study looked at emailing habits and found out that people fall into two main groups: those that email mainly during the day and those that are “emailaholics.” By determining the emailing habits of people, researchers hope that they can use this data to distinguish between real emails and spam. I think it is pretty cool and I hope it works. I’d like less spam in my life.

Do you love Wi-Fi? I love using Wi-Fi when I’m waiting in airports, but we all know the risks about using wireless internet. So what can you do to ameliorate those risks? Check out this great article on Wired’s Ho-to Wiki: Secure your Wi-Fi when Traveling. This is a good refresher on how to protect your data when using Wi-Fi.

Enjoy the week. The Waki Librarian will be back soon with more technology and library fun.

Music on Friday

/ dwakimoto

I love music. I think most people love music. Now I’m not suggesting piping music throughout the library, like they have done at some libraries. I think that is just, well, kind of weird and I wouldn’t want to inflict muzak on everyone. Besides, everyone has different tastes in music. So why am I bringing up music on a blog dedicated to libraries and technology? Well, for three reasons:
1. It is Friday and, well, Fridays call for something a little less serious.
2. I really think music can improve a person’s mood.
3. I love the online applications that let you create your own music stations and find new music.

So I thought, hey, why not share some of those online applications. I’d love to hear which ones are your favorites.

Hands down, my favorite online music application is Pandora. It is a great music discovery tool. Plus, you don’t have to download anything on your computer, so even if your work computer is locked down, you should still be able to stream music from Pandora. I quite like that.

Here is another music application, Sourcetone. Lifehacker talked about Sourcetone a while ago. It is an interesting concept; you move around a box to a spot on the color wheel that fits your mood at the moment and Sourcetone will play music that fits your mood. You can change the genre of music you want as well. I like this concept in theory, but haven’t had much success with it yet. Then again, Sourcetone is getting a lot of heavy traffic, most likely due to said Lifehacker article, that could explain some of the issues I’ve been having with it. Plus the ads on the bottom kind of annoy me. Let me know if you’ve had success using Sourcetone.

Music Artist Cloud is a super-simple music tool–just type in an artist whose music you like and there you go. I think it is a great mash-up idea with YouTube videos and tag clouds of other artists that you might like. This is so easy to use and another great way of checking out some new music. Plus you get to watch music videos.

And because I’d feel guilty if I didn’t link to at least one, obviously useful at work article, here is Lifehacker’s Five Best Free Data Recovery Tools. Seriously, take a look at this, because it is super helpful and at some point, you will need to use one of these tools.

Have a happy Friday and a great weekend. The Waki Librarian will be back next week.

Writing & Communication

/ dwakimoto

I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time every day writing. Now, most of the stuff I write isn’t creative writing or even writing for publication, but it is writing. All of spend inordinate amounts of time writing emails, Tweeting, IM-ing, blogging and composing memos. Writing is a part of our daily life and is all about communicating–one of the key parts of human life. So this post is about, more or less, writing and communicating.

By now I think my utter love of Lifehacker is apparent, but how can one not love Lifehacker when they have great lists like the five best journaling tools. Because sometimes, you don’t want to share your life with the world and you just want your thoughts for yourself, it is important to have a place to journal. I also love the fact that good, old-fashioned, analog pen and paper completely slaughtered the competition.

Another blog that I’ve just started following is Manage Your Writing. I quite like it so far and there have been a number of useful tips and posts. I like this slightly older post on writing to persuade. Every time we write, we are writing to persuade someone about something, even if it is only to go to the restaurant we want to go to at lunch. So using these tips in your writing might not only make your writing more powerful and persuasive, you might even get more done. And I love getting things done. As The Cult of Done Manifesto says, “Done is the engine of more.”

I also quite like this article on WikiHow on how to stop dealing with someone else’s lateness. I have to say one of my pet peeves is waiting for other people because they are late. I completely agree with this article that it is disrespectful to be continually late. I hope that this article can help you if you are dealing with people who run late. Plus, not waiting around for late people will allow you time to get more done and that’s always a good thing.

And, just because I can’t end a post without something fun, take a look over at xkcd’s comic on philosophy.

Have a great day.

Careers

/ dwakimoto

I have to say that I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that Info Career Trends is going on indefinite hiatus. I think it is one of the best places to go for articles about all sorts of facets of library careers, work and advice. Thank goodness that the back issues will remain on the web, along with feeds from other parts of the blog. So in honor of ICT, I had to talk a little about two of the articles that come from the last issue and touch home for those of us who are new and/or work in academia.

Moving Ahead without Moving Up by Brenna Helmstutler is a great article for those who work as academic librarians. She offers some great suggestions on being involved and evolving in your role as an academic librarian. I especially liked the reminders of what types of characteristics one should cultivate as you move forward.

To the point of what you can do to move forward, here is Veronica Arellano’s article Ask Forgiveness Later. I completely adore this article because it is pretty much how I feel about work and implementing new technologies and tools in the workplace. As it is often said, “It is better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Not to be totally subversive, but it works pretty well. Not that committees, as Arellano points out, don’t have a place in the academic scheme of things, but often change needs to take place on an individual level before it ever moves onto a committee or institutional level. You can’t wait for someone else to give you a project to do, you have to go out and try things. And some fail spectacularly and some succeed brilliantly–luckily there is always something else to try.

I just finished listening to a Webinar led by Darlene Fichter & Jeff Wisniewski titled “How Social is Your Web Site?” today. It reminds me of the points above in that one needs to get out into the social media, but also have a plan. One can be slightly subversive, but still have a plan and that probably is one of the best recipes for succeeding in the ever-changing social media landscape. The best part of the webinar was definitely the ways of measuring success in implementing social media through quantitative measures and qualitative measures. We need to prove the worth of our services in order to move more fully into the Web 2.0 world. More on that later.

Have a great day. Remember to read a lot, think a little about how you can move forward and the Waki Librarian will be back with another missive soon.

Signs of the Times

/ dwakimoto

I am really bad at making up blog post titles so please forgive the overused title of this post. So here is a round-up of some tips and articles all about saving money, time, and getting things done during our lovely recession.

So as we all know, being green is the new black. In honor of that, here is Lifehacker’s Top 10 Battery Hacks. Here’s to getting more out of your batteries and to using rechargeable batteries. I have to say I love rechargeable batteries. I use them in everything that I don’t plug into my computer to charge, except for the cell phone. So what’s your favorite battery hack?

Okay, so between the hysteria over swine flu and the real problem of the recession, the news has not been so uplifting lately. Here is an interesting approach to saving money on a college degree:saving money with no-frills college. Although I think the entire problem of tuition needs to be tackled, no-frills colleges are a viable option for saving money. What do you think?

Okay, so it isn’t all doom-and-gloom on the economy front as Trade Paperbacks are doing quite well and some publishers are opting to have titles go straight to trade paperback, bypassing hardcover altogether. This works for me as I rarely have the money to buy titles in hardcover, but can usually afford a paperback–and trade paperbacks are usually pretty nice & have a larger cover than mass-market paperbacks which appeals graphically. So yay for yet another article that rallies in the face of the naysayers who just keep saying that reading is dead.

Finally, here is another Lifehacker article about Smart Installer which sounds great. Smart Installer will save you time by loading all the software you like on your new pc. This would have saved me so much time during the week where IT changed out the computer in my office three times.

Have a great Monday and the Waki Librarian will be back later in the week with more tech fun.

Graduate School and Reading

/ dwakimoto / 2 Comments

I think a lot about reading and college. This is not surprising considering I work at an academic library. However, I think that I just might be obsessing a little more than usual lately. At my library, we are trying to conserve paper and printer toner to a greater extent than we already do. So I’m sitting, staring at my computer screen even more than usual and pondering issues at the academy when my mind wanders as I try to read yet another pdf online.

So what does this have to do with today’s post? Well, I’m glad you asked.

To help with online reading, check out Readable which allows you to change the font, color and layout of what you are reading to make it easier to read. And you get to customize it to your settings. I think this is fabulous and definitely need to spend more time playing around with Readable. This is a free application and would be great for manipulating content for easier reading for those with vision difficulties.

Now, about college, more specifically graduate school. U.S. News just put out its new lists of the Best Graduate Schools. I was happy to see that my alma mater, Simmons College, got into the top ten for library science and ranked even higher for the archives and preservation program. Though not perfect, it is an interesting ranking list to check out. And who doesn’t like lists or checking out who’s who in the rankings?

This is an interesting opinion piece from The Wall Street Journal: So you Want to be a Professor. Just another look at the academy’s tenure versus adjunct professor debate and the fact that some universities are admitting fewer PhD students this year. Just some food for thought.

Hope everyone has a great day. More fun, interesting, and helpful news later this week.

100th Post

/ dwakimoto

Wow, I can’t believe that I am up to 100 posts on The Waki Librarian blog. I know that isn’t super impressive, but I’m amazed that I’ve written that much and that you, faithful reader, are still reading. I don’t have anything special planned for this post, just the usual assortment of helpful techie stuff and some library news.

First I need to do my public service announcement. ATM Skimmers have been making the headlines lately and I thought I would do my part to get people to pay attention when they are at the ATM. Thanks to the Consumerist, here is a great article (complete with pdf) on how to id an ATM Skimmer. Definitely check this out and protect your account. As I tell my students, identity theft can happen to anyone so at least make the thieves work for your information and don’t just give it to them!

In the vein of ridiculous challenges and bans to books that I wrote about a bit ago, here is ALA’s 2008 Top Ten List of Most Frequently Challenged Books. Although this came out a week ago, I wanted to offer the link just in case you missed it the first time around. And, for another year, And Tango Makes Three is the number one most frequently challenged book. Who knew that penguins could be so divisive?

Now for some fun, check out Unshelved’s Publisher Confidential, a very funny booklet of “frank feedback for publishers from librarians, booksellers, and readers.” Created in conjunction with BookExpo America, this is a superb comic booklet. Really, take a few minutes and have a laugh–it’s good for your health. Oh, and then RSS Unshelved if you haven’t already.

Now Prezi has been making the blog rounds lately. Thanks to Lori for the heads-up on this as I was buried in conference paper preparation and almost missed it in on my Lifehacker feed! Prezi is a web-based presentation tool with a difference. You create your whole presentation on one stage and use the cool zoom and path features to make sense out of your one master stage that holds all the information for your presentation. You can sign up for a free account and there are lots of helpful video tutorials on how to get started. As always, I suggest watching a couple tutorials and then diving on in. There is nothing like playing around with a new application to learn it. It is really fun and a time sink so you are now forewarned!

I think Prezi would be great for presentations at some conferences, but I have to admit that some of the zooming makes me a little sick. So one little hint: just because you can use a fast zoom while twisting your presentation in Prezi, doesn’t mean you always should. Remember when animated GIFs were all the rage? I rest my case.

Have a great Thursday, read a lot, get off the computer and outside at least once if you can, and the Waki Librarian will be back with more fun and helpful information soon.

Realizations and Fun

/ dwakimoto

I know it is just stating the obvious, but it is Monday. And what a Monday, we are in the middle of a mini-heatwave out here and it is the fourth week of the quarter which means the first midterm panic/rush is upon us. But that will not stop us, faithful readers, from having some fun and perhaps coming to a few realizations about the academy and librarianship. Maybe they will not be new realizations, but they will be realizations none the less.

I think that this blog entry, 5 Things I Didn’t Realize I’d Be Working On, should be required reading for any new or aspiring librarians. I have to say that it rung true for me. So much of my day is spent troubleshooting computer and printer issues on the desk and a lot of my teaching time is spent creating online modules and videos. The face and work of librarians are changing, even while our core values of service, access and learning are not. I met quite a few people in library school who talked about working by themselves, away from the public, and reading a lot. Thus, this post is very timely and there are those that still need to be reminded that the librarian’s work is always evolving and literally never done.

In that vein, I think that coming to the profession with an open mind and retaining the same open mind is one of the best assets a librarian can have. Oh, and a desire to learn and understand applications of new technology. Oh, and a love of helping people. And, well, as you know the list goes on and on. Librarians are, without a doubt, some of the people most likely to be polymaths and very happy that their jobs allow them to explore so many varied areas and tasks.

This article, Admissions of Another Sort, is really not ground-breaking news, but rather a re-realization and confirmation of just how important and necessary librarians are to student learning. Long live the information literate individual! (and the librarian that helps him/her become so)

Now for a little fun. I think this must be one of the coolest applications I’ve seen in a while. DoInk is a free, web-based animation application. I just finished watching the video tutorial and was super-impressed by how simple the interface is but also how powerful it looks for creating animations. Just think of the cool videos you could make with DoInk. I’m definitely trying this out and seeing what I can create for my classes.

Have a great rest of your Monday and the Waki Librarian will be back later in the week for more fun and productive tidbits from the web.