Author: dwakimoto

Online Northwest: Heck with HAL

/ dwakimoto

Open the Pod Bay Door to the Deep Web Yourself with Google’s Custom Search
by: Dale Vidmar, Southern Oregon University

Custom Search Engines (CSE)
Specialized Search engine–search select sites
You select the sites
Need a Google account
Control the results of a query: give priority to different sites, rank them, etc.
Adds human element to the algorithm

Why Bother?
Good Sites= value-added service, focus search on “good” sites
People are used to search engines
Make webliographies searchable
Search deep web
Effectively assist others find better information
Embed a search bo on your website
Can create a CSE without advertisement at no cost

9 Steps to Getting Started creating a CSE
1. Sign up for a Google Account
2. Go to Google Custom Search Engine
3. Create a CSE and provide basic info–title, description, keywords, and language
4. Select sites you want to search
5. Create the URL Patterns to search–taking root of site and add * (truncation)
6. Determine what you want to search–priorities of sites, what searching,, etc.
7. Choose the free standard version
8. Read Terms of Service
9. Create your CSE, test it out, and edit or alter as necessary.

After you create the CSE, get an email with all the code to your CSE

Creating URL Patterns
First Rule–keep it simple
ex. www.ous.edu/onlinenw/*
Add complexity as necessary
*.sou.edu/*

Pretty easy to do. Walked through creation of a search engine.

To me, very similar process to creating Google Gadgets, lots of the same options–Google has some great stuff, no wonder it is taking over the online world.

Get Help: Google Custom Search–Basics and Advanced, from Google

Take Home Message: Yay, Google Custom Search Engines! I guess I have something new to play around with now.

Online Northwest: 2, 4, 6, Great: Handouts They'll Appreciate

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by: Anna Johnson

Used to be a document designer, now an Instruction Librarian from Mt. Hood Community College

Crash course in document design, then differences between web and paper as delivery platforms, walk through of making handouts that are useful to users.

Goal: To have people want your handouts.

Edward Tufte (www.edwardtufte.com)
document design, design display
famous about attacking PowerPoint
Designers know less about the content than the average user of the content
But in libraries, librarians are content experts
Just need to learn basics of document design
Give handouts before hand so people can get the information and then you can discuss the points

Just referring to handout instead of going over the handout
Make handouts more content rich
More time for active learning

Johnson argues that more information is better, make longer handouts, mostly 4 pages long (11×14 paper with 4 faces)

Webpages should be interactive, paper doesn’t have to be
Paper handouts should stand alone
Need handouts to work longer, even with changes on the library website
Therefore paper handouts need be relevant longer if people keep them
Different reading styles online versus print

Presentation is a summary of your handout instead of your handout being a summary of your presentation. Give more information to take home with the handout.

Process:
90% of effort in making a Word document handout
Using Word because everyone has Word
Need to be sharable resources

Construction of Handout:
Design in tables to align text and graphics
Create hyperlinks from words, useful when turn Word document into a pdf for the web
Need colors that print correctly in black and white for photocopies
Page length: should be even number of pages so you don’t waste any paper

PDF is very important, locks in style, (but problem of accessibility)

Use color paper instead of color ink, more cost effective way of getting color into your handouts

Can adapt handout style to class syllabi too

Summary: This presentation was an ode to Edward Tufte and his design principles. I’m not buying all of this; but this is definitely food for thought.

Take home message: You want users to have content to use when you are not there. Design is important, as are handouts.

Online Northwest 2009 Keynote

/ dwakimoto

Keynote by Dr. BJ Fogg, from Stanford

Title: The New World of Persuasive Technology

Talking about technology and behavior change, especially online video
Computers and persuasion (captology, coined the term)

We can create machines that influence how people behave, changing human behavior

Europe and the US academics are working on persuasive technology

The web is a platform for persuasion:
Every website has a persuasive intent (key to teach our students)
All have a persuasive goal
You wouldn’t create a website unless you had a goal

Social networks are platforms for persuasion

Mobile phones will be platforms for persuasion

All about videos now. Bringing video into the context of your life.

Technology changes, but human psychology doesn’t change as quickly; it is stable.

How do you think clearly about behavior change?
Think about persuasion targets in professional life.
What behavior do you want people to do?

Fogg likes to do beneficial things with technology (therefore not in the school of business 🙂
Change the world in great ways.

3 core things that change human behavior: motivators, simplicity, and triggers

Target Behavior: Parting with your money (pledge money)
Question: When it comes to soliciting money, is personal video message better than generic email?
Email: 0% of people pledged
Video: 58% watched video, 82% of those pledged, overall 47% pledged

Why does this work? It is the experience that is persuasive–video.

Persuasion goes back a long way. (Fogg uses Wordle a lot 🙂
Goes back to Adam and Eve–what if there was facebook?

Facebook is #1 persuasive technology right now.
Did a class on Facebook
Student projects–making applications for Facebook
projects got 16 million users in 10 weeks
Secret: Think clearly & run many trials

Human Psychology:
What motivates people?
Humans are fairly predictable.
Motivators:
Pleasure and pain
Hope and fear
acceptance and rejection

Driver behind Facebook–social interaction, want social acceptance and avoid rejection

Mega-motivation: no, doesn’t get behavior change
Need more than just motivation to change behaviors

Other factors:
People need to be able to do what you ask them to do.
Easy to accomplish goals
Need motivation and ability
Simplicity is good. People don’t want to learn mostly.
People: Just give me a pill.
Make it simple and easy for people, if you want behavior change
Don’t require training

Simplicity has 6 elements:
Time
Money
Effort
Brain cycles
social deviance
non-routine

People are fine watching video; rather watch a video than read. Therefore instructional videos are great.
Demos

Humans are mostly lazy

Keypoint: reduce behavior to one choice, one step, one click.

People who like to think hard and challenge themselves are the outliers.

Add video to increase motivation for behavior change.

Either simplify or motivate in order to change the behavior if what you want to happen is not happening.

Must know which path when persuading people using technology. Code doesn’t adjust unlike people. Must think clearly about context when making videos and application.

6 Different flavors of web video (can find on the web)

Even when people have motivation and ability, you need to trigger the behavior.
Facebook has notifications, which is one reason why it is so successful

All 3 must be present at the same moment to have behavior happen (motivation, ability and trigger).

Focus on trigger and simplicity, usually have enough motivation.

Thoughts: Absolutely great speaker.

Take home message: Use more videos to trigger behaviors that you want.

Another Reason for IL Instruction and Why Open Source Rocks

/ dwakimoto

Happy Monday. Wow, it is back to work time again. But never fear, faithful reader, I have some news and tidbits that should make sliding back into work mode a little more palatable.

First up, check out this article about how more information leads to less knowledge. So the basic thrust of the argument is that now, with people literally swimming in information via the web, we still have people that remain willfully ignorant of various concepts and that we are devolving to argue facts instead of the meaning behind the facts. I love the term “agnotology,” coined by Robert Proctor, a historian of science at Stanford. Agnotology is “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.”

Now if anything cried out the need for information literacy instruction, the fact that agnotology has now been coined cries out loud and clear. Information literacy is the key to creating knowledge out of the morass of information that is omnipresent in our lives.

This could make you feel a little overwhelmed by the herculean task that faces those of us in the information sciences professions, especially those who teach information literacy. But I say, what an opportunity to teach and yes, another point to make the case for our relevancy in society. But if you are still feeling a little overwhelmed about all the work there is to be done, check out this article from WebWorker Daily about marking the end of your work day in order to accomplish more and actually stop working at a reasonable time. Though not all of us work at home each day, these are still great tips for any of us who are tempted to work 24/7. It’s not healthy to work that much and it is great to have some ritual that lets your mind and body know that it is really time to quit work. Besides which, most everything can wait until morning. As one of my friend’s boss says, “Failure to plan on your part, does not constitute an emergency on my part.” So back away from the computer and go for a walk.

Raise your hand if you are interested in design? Interested in art? Really, you’re not? Well, then skip this paragraph and move on. For those interested in how art, and more specifically colors, affect our emotions and productivity, check out this New York Times article, Reinvent Wheel? Blue Room. Defusing a Bomb? Red Room. It basically delves into the interesting and sometimes odd research area of how color affects emotions and reactions. So if red increases accuracy and blue increases creativity, maybe I should have a maroon office so I get the best of both worlds. Just kidding.

Luckily, the title of the above article leads into this next bit of information. Or mainly, leads to my rant about silos of information in libraries and everyone trying to reinvent the wheel. Why this small rant? I got this article in my RSS feed this morning on open source solutions for libraries. That didn’t make me annoyed; as everyone knows I fully support open source solutions for libraries, especially with the outrageous costs of some vendor products. I even think LibLime is wonderful, although it is not responsible for the invention of Koha, it is now a vendor and support provider for Koha and some it developers now work on Koha, though.

My big gripe is that, in this age of shrinking budgets and staffing levels, multiple libraries are trying to reinvent the wheel. Why? Why can’t librarians just all work together on the same platform and pool their collective intelligences? It frustrates me to no end that everyone is trying to work on the same problem in their little silos instead of looking around to see if anyone else has already invented the wheel.

Take Koha for example. It was developed in New Zealand and implemented in 1999-2000. It has been through multiple versions, and is a stable, open-source, fully-featured ILS system. It can be scaled to any sized library, can be used in consortia, and actually looks great. So why are other libraries insisting on homegrown systems when they could be helping to make Koha better? There is even support for this open source system, note the reference to LibLime above.

Let’s all stop re-inventing the same wheel. Or in other words, instead of everyone storming off to Mount Doom on their own, why doesn’t someone text Frodo and Sam first to see if the mission has been accomplished? Then we can all get back to improving and collaborating existing systems, have that all elusive goal of interoperability, and get back to helping our patrons make sense of the latest information that has blasted them on the web.

That’s all I’m really saying.

See you later in the week.

Value of College and other Fun Discussions

/ dwakimoto

So it’s a rainy Friday in the Bay Area. On the one hand, that is a very good thing because we need the rain, on the other hand, it’s not because I’m still battling a cold and it just makes me want to crawl back into bed and go to sleep. But faithful readers, it will take more than a cold to keep the Waki Librarian from sharing some goodies to make your Friday a little brighter.

First up, Photoshop tutorial. The 60 most wanted Photoshop tutorials to be exact. I’ve managed to keep Photoshop off the blog, but now must share my unending love affair with this program. I love Photoshop–it is fabulous and I know you can find free photo editing software too, which rocks, but my heart belongs to Photoshop. And now with these wonderful, free tutorials on Photoshop, I will never be able to put down my Wacom tablet and pen as I test out more interesting fire effects and painting effects.

What does this have to do with libraries? Well, I’m sure we all know of a few libraries, organizations and/or logos in need of an update or two. Now with Photoshop you can make fabulous graphics or just clean up some photos taken at your last library event. Yes, Photoshop is super-powerful and has a pretty steep learning curve, but if you like design (even a little bit) you will be so glad you learned it.

Moving on now to something that I think is right on point to our continuing discussions of libraries, education, technology and fun is this article called, “Rethink the Value of College”. It is a timely piece about how much a college education is worth in this time of economic uncertainty. It also asks the question: what is the best way to prepare young people for the changes ahead and the fact that most will have multiple careers and jobs. College is still valuable, but it must be re-evaluated and re-engineered to fit today’s paradigm. Coming to college without adequate preparedness hurts everyone and leaving college with staggering amounts of student loan debt hurts many students. We seriously need a holistic re-evaluation and re-alignment of how we educate and prepare people in our colleges and universities.

Now, of course, I can’t leave you on such a gloomy thought on a Friday. So here is one of my absolutely favorite photography blogs A Walk through Durham Township, Pennsylvania. While Kathleen Connally is somewhat uneven in her execution of her photographs, the majority are absolutely beautiful and make even this sun loving California girl think snow looks pretty. Two of my favorites are titled “My Dream Studio” and “Mr. Darcy (A Baby Pygmy Goat).” And did I mention you can RSS it?

Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll see you next week.

Sunday Fun

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I’m at work today. I figured why not make a blog post today as I have seriously lapsed and not done a book review this week. I’m sorry, faithful readers, but I just couldn’t tape any reviews this morning before going to work. I promise to do another book review this coming weekend.

So, like I was saying, I’m at work and it is quiet as it is Super Bowl Sunday and all. So to celebrate, here is a Sunday edition of random fun.

First up is Tyealyzer. I think this is so fun. You just type in a blog’s URL and it will tell you what personality type is evidenced by the blog’s writing style. The Waki Librarian is an ISTP. Or as Typealyzer says, The Mechanics. Apparently that means my blog is independent, a quick thinker and problem solver who likes risks. Hmm… While that isn’t the result of the last Myers-Briggs test I took, I think it sums up this blog very well. This blog is all about problem solving, do it yourself tips and tricks. So have some fun and enter your favorite blogs into the Typealyzer.

Speaking of tips and tricks, it just wouldn’t be a post without mention of Lifehacker. In honor of it’s birthday, Lifehacker has put together a post of Lifehacker’s best posts 2005-2009. This is a really good look at where we’ve been and where we are going technology-wise. So have some fun with it.

Oh, and what has got to be the coolest thing to play with, only tangentially related to libraries, is this tour of Stephen King’s office. Yes, you can take a virtual tour of King’s office, with more on the way later this year. It if fantastic, especially if you like Stephen King’s novels and other writings. It is an interactive tour, so get ready to pick up the Wizard’s glass, see props from various movies and get attacked by Ben. Really, this is awesome. I can’t wait to explore it some more.

Last but certainly not least, here is SpeedCrunch, a calculator program that runs on just about any platform and machine. It’s way more powerful than the puny calculator that comes standard with Windows and helpful for those times when you just don’t have a scientific calculator handy.

Enjoy the day and I’ll see you again soon.

More Tips about Resolutions, Research and Book Accumulation

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Yes, I know, it is another post that is just a hodge-podge of information and articles. But, as always, I will attempt to make these seemingly random topics come together in a coherent fashion. After all, what are librarians good at doing if not collecting information, analyzing it and making sense of it all?

First up is this wonderful photography resource. Photography research is one of the most useful things I learned in library school. And now the Library of Congress has made photography research easier with there Researcher’s Toolbox. Check it out and be amazed at all the different photographic processes and information that can be gleaned from photographs.

Now, there are a lot of photographs of people online that you can find via Flickr, Google Image Search, etc. But that’s not all, you can also find a lot of personal information on just about everyone on the Internet too. Lifehacker’s article on data privacy is so relevant in today’s hyperlinked world. I’m always amazed how much you can find out on the Internet and how little people think about data privacy.

And finally, maybe, these will be the last articles about keeping New Year’s Resolutions: Lifehacker’s article on avoiding common mistakes and the Top Ten Tools for Sticking to your New Year’s Resolutions because you know I can never pass up a good list.

Lastly, here is an entire part of a wiki on how to stop accumulating books. Handy if you are moving, but really, who wants to stop accumulating books. I mean like Michel de Montaigne said, “When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.” I have no problem with book accumulation, but I’m sure others do. My easy fix, other than patronizing your local library (which you should be doing anyway) is to buy another bookshelf–easy to find and IKEA has pretty, inexpensive ones in tons of colors.

See? Once again the Waki Librarian has solved your book, data, and resolution dilemmas! Never let it be said that I didn’t try to help.

Enjoy the day and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Rock on Neil Gaiman!

/ dwakimoto

Happy Tuesday! Yes, I am well aware of the fact that this blog post is late. I usually get a post up on Monday, but it has kind of been a crazy weekend and start of the week. So I apologize for the delay. But to make up for it, here is a post all about Neil Gaiman.

First off, congratulations to Neil Gaiman for winning the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. Read more about it in this page about the Newbery Medal from ALA. That is really cool and Gaiman is a fantastic writer so celebrate by getting one of his books and reading!

Also, Neil Gaiman happens to have a fantastic blog which you can find at Neil Gaiman’s Journal. Honestly I don’t know how he can write as much as he does on his blog and Twitter feed (follow: neilhimself) and still have time to write such amazing stories.

Also, the claymation movie Coraline, based on Neil Gaiman’s story, is coming to theaters February 6th. Did you like The Nightmare Before Christmas? Well, this has the same director, Henry Selick and looks fabulously creepy. I can’t wait.

Haven’t heard of this before? Check out the trailer below:

And just in case, for some reason, you aren’t into Gaiman’s work, here is a little piece you might be interested in: a post about how to embed almost anything in your webpage. This is great. I learned how to embed the high definition version of the Coraline trailer that you watched above.

Enjoy your day, more later in the week.

Friday Random Fun Stuff

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Happy Friday! It’s almost the weekend, but first I have a few random, fun and hopefully helpful resources for you and your other library buddies. Fridays should be fun and slightly random, or else how would we get ready for the weekend?

So as you know, faithful reader, I also do podcasts of workshops I lead. Well, I have to say, I would love this podcast set-up. Basically, as Wired says, it is a studio in a box for podcasting. I bet my audio would sound better with this. So if you want to get into podcasting, here is your chance. And just to let you know, Audacity really doesn’t crash that much, but save a lot you know, just in case.

I am always looking for ways to keep organized, so I am very happy with this article on eight ways to keep your office clutter free. This is a constant challenge that I think everyone struggles with at some point. And I just love the fact that one of the suggestions is to create and keep a records retention policy! Records managers for the win on this one!

And who doesn’t like free stuff? Well, here is your freebie for Friday: an audiobook copy of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from Audible. Yup, completely free. Don’t you just love it?

And last, but certainly not least, here is Ueatcheap.com, a website that helps you find places to eat for under $10. I know this will be of great interest of anyone looking to save money, but especially all the starving grad students out there. And, yes, you can join the site and start adding your own opinions and restaurants you like.

So that is all I have for on this rainy Friday. Have an awesome weekend! Now, stop staring at your computer and go read (or listen) to a book!

Mobile Technologies and the Library

/ dwakimoto

Hello! Wow, it is the middle of the month, but doesn’t it feel like a new year?

In honor of President Obama, here is a short article about the President librarians can love. I think it is just wonderful that the article says that Obama gave a “shout-out” to librarians in one of his weekly addresses. I mean, we got a shout-out. That is pretty darn cool. And, hopefully having an intelligent, well-read president will encourage more people to pick up a book and just read!

Next up, a bit unrelated but not really, is this great research article on the Information Ecology of Social Media. It is from 2007, but still is pretty relevant. I love the graphs showing interconnectivity among blogs and discovering blog communities in the blogosphere. I think librarians have a thing or two to teach the rest of the world about the blogosphere! I need time to do a closer reading of this article, but have office hours ssoon so that will have to wait.

How cool is it that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) now have CDC Mobile? That’s right, they have optimized their website for mobile devices so you can now get credible health information right on your iPhone or other device. Rock on for taking on the mobile revolution CDC!

To end with, here is a great story about text messages saving languages. I think this is just wonderful, not only because I happen to be a huge fan of text messages, but because here is a use of text messages that I bet wasn’t on anyone’s radar when the first lowly text message was sent. However, if advocates succeed in getting more language options for predictive text on cellphones, think of what a boon that would be for the world’s languages, especially in the hands of teenagers (who, after all, are the ones who will be perpetuating the world’s languages). Not to mention, of course, the almost infinite crazy misunderstandings that will happen when people start creating text messaging lingo in their native languages. Now that is going to make for some interesting lost in translation moments! LOL

Mobile technologies are here to stay, a new day is dawning in the United States (sorry for the horrid use of a cliche, just couldn’t resist), and librarians can assist both with mobile technologies and with keeping our patrons informed and hopefully and really well-read. So rock on librarians! Have a great rest of your day, but now I’ve got to jet–I have office hours.