2006 LITA National Forum in Nashville October 30, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Conferences, LITA.1 comment so far
On October 26-29, 2006, I attended the 2006 LITA National Forum in Nashville, TN. The theme was NetVille in Nashville: Web services as library services. It was a wonderful conference this year! Dale Poulter in LITS here at Vanderbilt was the Chair of the Forum Planning Committee, and I think he and the rest of that committee did a great job! (Even the food was awesome!)
I went to a preconference on Developing Best Project Management Practices for IT Projects and you can read my summary and comments from Day 1 and Day 2 on the LITA blog. After the preconference, I attended a variety of sessions and heard lots of great speakers! Below are the sessions I attended.
General Sessions (with links going to summaries on LITA blog)
Save America’s Treasures: Preservation of Rare Acetate and Vinyl Recording Transcriptions
Alan Stoker, Recorded Sound and Moving Image Curator, and Steve Maer, Recorded Sound Archivist, Country Music Hall of Fame
Libraries and Public Interest Entertainment
Thom Gillespie, Indiana University
Web 2.0 and the Library 2.0 in Our Future
Stephen Abram, VP Innovation, SirsiDynix
Concurrent Sessions (with links going to summaries on LITA blog)
Adding Bells and Whistles to the Web: The Blog and the Pod
Improving Library Services with Ajax and RSS
Archiving & Preserving the Web
Multimedia Tutorials for Remote Users
Low Threshold Strategies for Libraries to Support “Other” Types of Digital Publishing
Also on Saturday evening, I walked with a bunch of LITA bloggers to the Flying Saucer for some dinner and liquid refreshments. They took pictures and blogged it, naturally.
Overall, the conference left me energized and eager to get back to work and play with the new technologies I was introduced to, and to implement some of the strategies and project management tools I learned.
Next year, the LITA National Forum will be in Colorado! Woo hoo!
Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 October 29, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Browsers, In The News.add a comment
The two most popular browsers have new versions available for download! I have already been using both, and man are they getting slicker! For those who traditionally only use IE, just a warning before you download. The interface has changed dramatically, so be forewarned that things are changing! I’ll be downloading these to the public workstations soon, too.
Mozilla Firefox 2 came out on October 24th. It didn’t change drastically, and you may not even notice the changes unless you are a die-hard Firefox user. Its new features are:
- improved tabbed browsing
- search suggestions
- spelling suggestions
- options to subscribe to a feed as a Live Bookmark, using a Web service such as Bloglines, My Yahoo!, or Google Reader, or the client side reader of your choice
- increased phishing protection and security
- even more customizations
- even more add-ons
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 came out about 2 weeks ago. If you currently use Firefox, you’ll notice that IE has leveled the playing field by adding the features that Firefox, Safari, or Opera have had for quite some time now. But IE still holds about 85% of the browser market share, so now we can just wait to see what Firefox will do to keep ahead in the Browser wars. Anyway, IE’s new features include:
- a redesigned, more streamlined interface
- more security
- tabbed browsing
- tabs can be organized into groups and viewed in thumbnail form using the Quick Tabs feature
- web search multiple search engines (not simultaneous – that would be a metasearch) right from the toolbar
- when printing website, you’ll be offered a “shrink to fit” feature
- an antiphishing filter warns users who are about to visit spoofed web sites
- easy discovery, reading and subscription to RSS feeds
- and two things I like:
- it will finally handle the alpha channels correctly for transparent PNG images
- improved support for cascading style sheets (CSS)
Network Ports at the Service Desk October 24, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Computers.add a comment
There are several ports at the Service Desk that do not seem to be activated, or have suddenly stopped working, that are supposed to be activated and working. I will contact Vanderbilt ITS about this, as I am not sure entirely what’s happened.
AskLibrarians Spam Filter October 23, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Spam & Viruses.add a comment
The AskLibrarians Mailbox now has a spam filter. How did I do this? Log into the computer using the AskLibrarians username and password (which can be found on the passwords excel spreadsheet), and then follow the directions on How to set up a SPAM filter in Outlook 2003. The Circulation and BIS Mailboxes could also have spam filters set up similarily.
Report phishing scams to VU ITS October 23, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Spam & Viruses.2 comments
There are phishing emails scams out there designed to collect valid email addresses for future spam efforts.
If you would like to report such emails in the future, the best process is to forward the email in an Outlook Message file Format to the abuse email address. To forward such emails please follow these instructions:
1. Click once on the email to highlight (do not open the email)
2. Go to File>Save As
Click on the “Save as type:” drop down box
Select “Outlook Message Format (*.msg)”
Save the Outlook message file to your desktop
3. Create a new email message
4. Attach the saved Outlook message file and forward to abuse@vanderbilt.edu
5. Delete the saved message on your desktop
This saves the message and other important information about the email in an Outlook Message Format file. This practice also allows ITS to forward the complete email to the vendor who will update the spam definitions.
Otherwise the best practice is to delete such emails.
Information provided from:
Terry Cavender, CISA, PMP
Security Service Delivery Manager
Information Technology Services
Vanderbilt University
The color printer & VUprint saga conclusion October 20, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Printers, VUprint.2 comments
I had hoped that one of my first entries could be about something fun and interesting, innovative and inherently geeky, but noooooo. It’s about VUprint, the campus-wide pay-for-print service. But alas, here is the conclusion to what seemed like the ongoing saga of Whitney_color (the Okidata color printer) and its almost seemingly destined partner, VUprint.
After much talking with Flo about all the advantages and disadvantages of putting the color printer on the VUprint system, we have decided to stick with having users pay for their color print jobs the old-fashioned way: monetary transactions with library staff at the Service Desk. If we did choose theVUprint route with the color printer, that would mean forcing users, including Owen students, faculty, and staff, to pay for their color print jobs through VUprint (swiping a card at the Print Release Station) instead of just a simple cash transaction. It would have also meant that everyone would have had to follow directions on how to add the printer since their print jobs would have been routed through theCSprint server instead of the Owen print server. I know how most library staff feel about having to swipe a card for VUprint with just the public workstations, soswiping a card for every single color print job would probably make then want to grab pitchforks and head toward my office.
Enough! What is going to happen? Well, on Sunday when I work, I will swap Blanc and Whitney_Color so people won’t be able to grab their color print jobs and run out the door without paying. Students, faculty, and staff will continue to pay for color print jobs in the same manner as before with good old fashioned cash (or credit card).
However, there is one change that should be noted. The color printer was added as an option at the public workstations in the library. Anyone, Owen and non-Owen people alike, will get charged $.50/page for anything sent to the color printer. (Black and white printing will remain the same at the public workstations, where members of the Owen community will not get charged and everyone else will.)
So even though VUprintis a good thing overall, and does prevent the masses from invading the library to abuse the free printing, it’s not the best solution at this time. We’ll reexamine this issue again when OGSM wants to discuss charging the students for all print jobs.
Librarians on YouTube October 18, 2006
Posted by Rachel in Humor.add a comment
I saw this the other day and wanted to capture it here since it made me smile and will surely make you smile too. It’s the “Betty Glover Library Workout Tape”, a fun video from 1987 about what libraries were like (sort of).
Amazon unbox goes live October 18, 2006
Posted by Rachel in In The News.add a comment
I was reading on Michael Stephen’s Tame the Web blog that Amazon recently unveiled something new called Amazon Unbox Video Downloads. I always like to keep an eye on what Amazon, Apple, and Google are doing. They are always several steps ahead of the rest of us (especially libraries). Anyway, you can purchase videos and download them to be watched on your computer or TV. The trend to buy physical DVDs and music is going by the wayside.
