Just for Fun

Fun on a Friday

/ dwakimoto

Today’s post is mostly about having fun with a little bit of food-for-thought thrown in along the way. I think we need some fun because it is a hot Friday and school has started!

Do you know what your sound is? Really-there is a site called Sound Badge that lets you create your own sound badge that you can use on your mobile phone, with Skype or on your blog if it allows JavaScript. I found this cool resource through Librarian in Black blog. While I’m not thrilled that there is no rock option for starting as the base of a sound badge (it will make more sense once you have been to the site, trust me), it is still fun and you could have all your students make a sound badge and compare them online. Mine’s here.

Did you know that many books have teaser trailers that are available on YouTube? Well, it was news to me. Some of the trailers were hilarious while others were very serious. Many were quite professionally done. I think this is a great way to publicize books. I think we need a trailer for our library on YouTube.

Here is the food-for-thought article on Jakob Nielsen’s findings of online literacy. If his name sounds familiar, it is not surprising as he is the big name in usability testing, among other research areas. He makes the case that online reading is not a replacement for reading in print based on his extensive research. This has profound implications for online teaching and online campuses. If students, and people in general, do not process or even read blocks of text online, how do we deliver online classes that require reading long passages of complicated text such as philosophy, history or English? What does this tell us about the whole push of buying ebooks (I’m not thinking of Kindle, etc. here but of ebooks that are read through online platforms such as ebrary, etc.)? Do students use them? Do they retain the information? Like I said, profound implications for online learning and for those of us who are trying to do what is best for our students in this increasingly online environment.

Now, I couldn’t end on such a heavy note for this Friday, so I have for you an article (with photographs) of a completely envy-inspiring library. I want Jay Walker’s library–enough said.

Have a great Friday and a terrific weekend. Comments always welcomed.

Resources for Back to School Time of Year

/ dwakimoto

At CSUEB, we start the fall quarter today and in honor of that I have three helpful resources: cheap textbooks, reference sites and the list universe. Today is all about useful reference sources that just happen to be found on the web.

Textbooks
Everyone knows how expensive textbooks are and how annoying it is to wait for the one copy to be returned to reserves so you can check it out for two hours. Been there, done that. So here is a cool article from Lifehacker about the best places to save money on textbooks. Really, do your friends, family and students a favor by sharing this article and the sites from the article. I have to add the site isbn.nu that my friend, Ruth, told me about in grad school. Also a great comparison shopping site for textbooks.

100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites
The title is from the actual post at Teaching Tips.com and not one I made up. A great list of reference sites on the web, some of which I’m sure you’ve heard of and others that might be new. A handy resource for all of us who work at a reference desk or in any other capacity where we are answering questions. The sites are divided into categories and I think it is cute that five sites are listed as “Librarian References”–obviously someone still has a limited idea about what is useful for librarians.

The List Universe
And, in my attempt to always have something fun in a post, I give you The List Universe. I happen to love lists and this site has a ton of them. But other than just being a place to spend time finding out random bits of information, it also is good for reference work and those annoying trivia games that some people find fun. So check it out; I’m not saying that all of it is great, but enough is to warrant a bookmark in del.icio.us.

Happy start of the Fall Quarter for CSUEB and happy Wednesday to everyone!

A Whole Lot of Fun

/ dwakimoto

Okay, so I’m sorry there haven’t been more posts this week. But, in my defense, I’ve been “oriented” at New Faculty Orientation and now am going to be at an on-campus conference (Back to the Bay) for 2 days. So I’ve not been truly slacking, only out of the office. So for those in my library, I’ve not forgotten about the tech brown bags, just waiting for some schedules to come out before we set the dates and start playing with cool new tools! 

As I was getting up this morning, I thought about what would be a couple of good resources for this Thursday. And I thought, why not have some fun? So I give you two sources, Unshelved and a talk from the SirsiDynixInstitute. 

If you are not familiar with the web comic strip, Unshelved, get ready for a laugh. This is a comic strip that is set in a public library and if you’ve ever worked in a public library you can completely relate. This is just fun and their store is great. I want the shirt that says “Library Schooled.” They are also the people behind Pimp my Bookcart! How can you not like that? So if you are new to the Unshelved universe, read their primer first. Enjoy! Oh, and did I mention you can get the comic strip and news via RSS? Just a thought…

For the second resource today, I give you Stephen Abram’s talk, Twenty five technologies to Watch and How. This is one of the great events that is archived from the SirsiDynix Institute. They are free to watch and listen to. This talk is from January of this year, but is great and I finally got around to listening to it the other day. I listened to the mp3 file, so if someone watches the video, I’d love to hear how it turned out. There is another webinar coming up on September 24th, “Welcome to the profession: Where will you be in 25 years? Is that where you want to be?” which I am totally looking forward to. So pop on by the website, you might just find something useful. Like a webinar a lot, find it fun and useful? Comment to this post to share with everyone else.

Happy Thursday!