Technology

Updating the Updates

/ dwakimoto

Do you ever feel like you just have a handle on technology and then it suddenly changes? I’m pretty much feeling the information overload lately, although that might be partially related to the lack of sleep. But as today’s post title says, I’m going to attempt to update some of the most recent updates about technology and tools that I’ve posted to the Waki Librarian blog. So here we go!

First off we have The Bookworm’s Guide to the Lifehacker Galaxy. A great article and compendium of book related websites and tools, some of which were mentioned in a previous post. But this is a great refresher and an excuse to think about books while online or under the guise of getting more organized.

Librarian in Black has a great post on text messaging, Pew Studies, and information overload. Since mobile technologies are so hot right now, it pays to read the study on text messaging and mobile use. As ever, more information to update you on the latest trends and ways of applying the data to your library’s needs.

And, as an update to news about college students and unemployment during this recession, take a look at this New York Times article, In Recession, Optimistic College Graduates Turn Down Jobs. This is something I just couldn’t believe until I read the quotes from students in the article. I can’t believe that someone would turn down a job now when I have friends that have been trying so hard to get employment for months. I am just flabbergasted; there are no words.

So that is the end of the updates of the updates. As always, read lots, have a fantastic day and the Waki Librarian will be back with more later this week.

Increasing Your Knowledge Base

/ dwakimoto

Knowledge management is one of the latest buzzwords (buzzphrase?). While it might get annoying to keep hearing about “knowledge management” no one can doubt its importance. But it isn’t just about knowledge management, you first need to have a knowledge base in order to have something to manage! So, in today’s turbulent economic times, I thought it would appropriate to share some interesting links and resources for expanding your knowledge base and taking care of business.

There is a great article on Lisjobs.com about how Multiple Knowledge Bases=Multiple Job Opportunities. I highly suggest checking it out because as everyone says, you never know where your next opportunity will take you or when it will be presented to you. And aren’t librarians some of the best people in the world when it comes to increasing our knowledge and being “Jack/Jill of all trades”?

Talking about knowing more and making connections, have you heard about linked data? If not, check out this great post on ReadWriteWeb.com on Linked Data. Definitely check out the TED talk and get ready for linked data. I think this is a fantastic opportunity, especially for use in reference questions!

And, because a post on increasing knowledge bases definitely needs to touch on employment, check out Beyond the Job. This is a great website to come to for information about professional development and tips for everyone . Really, it is great and it has an RSS feed so really, no excuse not to check it out.

Everyone should understand the importance of taking control of their data and profiles that are available online. However, you might not know about Google Profiles. So check out the information on Lifehacker about how you can create your own Google Profile.

Lastly, check out Business Week’s article on making decisions outside your comfort zone. It is always good to get outside your comfort zone once in a while. Plus it will help you increase your practical knowledge base.

That is it from the Waki Librarian. Have a great Friday and weekend. More next week.

Books in Social Networking

/ dwakimoto / 2 Comments

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer. Somehow, I always picture summer as being quiet in the library (as in I’ll be able to get everything done that I couldn’t during the academic year) and yet, it never ends up being as quiet as I imagine it.

But no matter, I still have had some time to round up some interesting tidbits when it comes to books, networking and even photo manipulation. So without further ado here they are:

First there is Bookseer. I love the look of this site: old fashioned art and an amazingly simple interface. You just type in the title and author of a book you just read, and Bookseer comes back with recommendations from Amazon, BookArmy and LibraryThing. This is a great use of recommendations from these sites and Bookseer is much better about recommending “what to read next” than a lot of other programs I’ve used. I especially love that below the recommendations there is a line that says “Of course, you could go ask your local bookshop or your local library.” So go forth and play–it might even help with some reader advisory questions. Though, as Bookseer acknowledges, nothing beats a knowledgeable human being for talking about books and recommendations.

So, do you participate in social networks? How about those networks especially for bibliophiles? Well, check out 100 places to connect with bibliophiles. This is a great annotated list of places online where you can indulge and share your love of books and reading. I am a fan of GoodReads, mainly because another friend recommended it to me. And that’s what this list and social networks are about, connecting people together–and what better way to connect than over a book?

So have you got the social networking down pat, but still feel awkward about networking, as in at conferences, events and for work? Then check out this article from The New York Times on networking for introverts. These are some commonsense tips on networking that are worth reviewing before you go out to an event that you hope to use as a networking opportunity. I think what helped me most with networking is to not call it networking. If I just think of it as talking with people, it becomes a lot easier. So what are your favorite networking tips?

And finally, we need to end on something completely off topic and fun. So check out the ever-helpful Lifehacker’s article on Repper. This is fun and turns your photos into abstract patterns that are great for background graphics. When you are ready to play, just go over to repper.studioludens.com. Repper has a very intuitive interface and it is really fun. Plus, I love that all the patterns that are created are licensed under a Creative Commons license. So check it out and let me know what you think.

Have a great day and I’ll be back with more technology and library related news later this week.

Fun for Summer

/ dwakimoto

Hi, all. Sorry for the long gap between posts. Between actually taking a vacation (outside, away from technology) and then getting sick, I haven’t really been up to blogging. But never fear, here is a post full of interesting tidbits and summer tips to help you through your day.

Okay, so the serious stuff first and then we’ll have the fun. Okay, I can’t believe that: 1. Chris Anderson plagiarized from Wikipedia and 2. that the “apology/reasoning” for plagiarizing Wikipedia was so weak. And I wonder, with stuff like this happening, why it is so difficult to get my students to understand the huge intellectual and academic offense of plagiarism.

Here is something semi-serious and kind of fun: CNN’s cost of living in another city calculator. Type in your current salary and select where you live and the city you want to compare it to and you’ll get a handy chart of differences in cost and equivalent salaries. It is quite depressing if you live in the Bay Area.

Okay, I don’t know about you, but I always want to tackle new projects in the summer. So here is a really cool project for those of you who want to do something crafty: create an inverted bookshelf. This looks awesome and as long as you aren’t doing this to house your first edition copies, I think you should be safe. I would love to do that in my office simply for the puzzled double-takes.

Now we are getting into the heart of summer. Everyone, but everyone takes vacation photographs. So, do you want to take better photos? Of course you do! So check out these tips on how to take better vacation photographs. Then, go take a vacation (even if it is just to the park down the street or the library in the next town over) and start snapping those pics!

If you anything like me, you probably get stains on your clothes occassionally. Or a lot if it is summer. Luckily for those of us that are slightly more clumsy (or unlucky) than others now have this handy guide to getting out stains. So summer should be less of a disaster on our clothes.

So get out there and enjoy the summer–just don’t forget your sunscreen! Next week The Waki Librarian will be at a conference so check back here for conference session summaries. Fingers crossed for working wireless access at the conference. Until next time, be waki, read a lot and have some fun. Have a great weekend.

End of the Quarter Bits

/ dwakimoto

It honestly doesn’t seem to make much difference if I’m teaching a class or taking a class, the end of the quarter is still filled with anxiety, last minute chores and lots of panicked students. It also means that I fall behind on bookmarking new web stuff, blogging about new web stuff, and basically just fall a little behind. So here is my attempt at catching up on some of the cool library and tech stuff that has been floating around my RSS feeds–basically just a little of this and a little of that.

So first for the technology bit, here is Lifehacker’s Top 10 Wallpaper Tools and Tweaks. These are amazing tips for creating or just finding desktop wallpapers that not only look beautiful but can help increase your productivity. I can’t wait to start designing a compartmentalized desktop and using the calendar feature– sounds like a good summer project to me. If you have another favorite source for wallpapers, please leave it in the comments.

And for a different change of pace, here is a news post that absolutely infuriates me: Kayne West is a “proud non-reader”. He says in the article that “I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.” One wonders then why on earth he decided to write a book. Thank goodness there are a lot of really awesome people who are very proud readers of books. Suddenly, trying to get my students, who are slightly less than enthusiastic about information literacy class at the beginning of the term, to actually engage in the class seems like a cakewalk. At least no one has ever told me they are proud of not reading books. Sheesh.

So to counteract that negativity, because we really need to, here is a great library hero who is Running a Library out of a School Locker. This student is running a library out of her locker at school, and the library is filled with banned books! Can we say born to be a librarian?! This is so amazingly awesome. The comments to this post are great reading as well. I sincerely hope the student did not get caught or in trouble for enabling students to read what they want. People who do things like this and totally get that banning books is pointless and stupid absolutely make my day.

So that is it for today’s bits of fun technology and library information. I hope everyone has a great week and I’ll be back soon with more goodies from the wide, wild world of information!

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.

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.

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.