Cool and easy way to improve online service instantly! April 29, 2007
Posted by Rachel in 2.0, IM, Something to think about, Wikis.add a comment
Holy smokes! I read my feeds pretty regularly. And each day I learn something new, and some days, I learn a whole heck of a lot! I’m amazed at how fast many web technologies are radically growing, evolving, and improving the way we interact with the web and with one another. But this post (rather, the technology itself) just got my mind racing about the possibilities. Read on.
On the Library Garden blog, there was a post about a new widget called YackPack that works like a walkie-talkie. You can talk to individuals or groups of people.
This fun widget allows you to very easily put voice on any type of Web page, with no configuration or registration to do, no software to download, no money to spend—just one “push-to-talk” button widget embedded on your site and you have a web walkie-talkie for live voice chat from any Web page.
The folks at Library Garden also talked about other technologies too, but the potential for having a talk button on a library website (and maybe on every research guide, database details page, help page, etc.) is amazing! Users could be using Meebo where they can just IM a librarian without having to download, install, or have an IM client at all. 
But with YackPack, they could just talk to a librarian. Here’s a little video that they had linked off their page. The video shows you how to add the little widget to a wiki. They use PBwiki in this example, but you can plop it on any type of webpage. How cool is that?
Voice chat… the next big thing?
They do talk about other technologies in this post, and overall, this is an excellent blog to be reading regularly if you aren’t already doing so. They always have engaging, fun content that will keep you coming back for more.
Pew Report on Wikipedia Usage April 27, 2007
Posted by Rachel in Wikis.add a comment
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has produced another cool report on Wikipedia usage.
There has been ongoing controversy about the reliability of articles on Wikipedia. Still, the Pew Internet Project survey shows that Wikipedia is far more popular among the well-educated than it is among those with lower levels of education. For instance, 50% of those with at least a college degree consult the site, compared with 22% of those with a high school diploma. And 46% of those age 18 and older who are current full- or part-time students have used Wikipedia, compared with 36% of the overall internet population.
Take a look at these numbers!
I first saw this on Michael Stephens’ and his Tame the Web blog. I agree that libraries probably need to be more involved and understand what Wikipedia is all about. Knowing about how various technologies work is an important part to getting at the heart of what information literacy is all about. How can you teach someone to use or not use Wikipedia if you don’t understand the process of creating an article within Wikipedia, or are aware of the measures they are taking to increase authority and reliability?
I am always telling my colleagues, some of whom are the more traditional reference librarians and bibliographers, and some of whom suffer from technophobia, that yes, information literacy is essential today, but so is technology literacy. The more that I read, the more I think that you can’t separate technology literacy from information literacy. They have become so interdependent.
Anyway, view the full report at the Pew site for more interesting information.
Swets Demo at Vanderbilt April 27, 2007
Posted by Rachel in Academic Libraries, Statistics.add a comment
Jim Huenniger, the National Sales Manager from Swets Information Services came to Vanderbilt today to talk to the Heard Library system to talk about two of their products, ScholarlyStats and SwetsWise. SwetsWise is wholly owned by Swets, while the ScholarlyStats product is owned by MPS Technologies, Inc. (a UK company).
Jim’s going to talk about Scholarly Stats and SwetsWise. Swets is based in Holland and has been in business 105 years, in 160 nations. They work with 65, 000 publishers, 60,000 clients, 1.8 million subscriptions. The flow of info is to acquire, access, and manage.
Their core services are in subscription management and they work with retrieval and normalization of usage data. They work between publishers and libraries.
It is a web-based portal. This is a good thing (meaning that it would be available anywhere as opposed to having something install on a computer).
Jim gave everyone a folder with lots of handouts. We went over the various collection platforms (EBSCOhost, Emerald, Blackwell Synergy, etc.) that work with Scholarly Stats, which is one of the handouts.
Benefits of the service:
- Gain added insight into user behavior
- Use time analyzing rather than administering usage data
- Reduce the real labor cost associated with data retrieval
- Counter compliance
- Usage data monthly
- Any report can be viewed online, printer
Benefits of the portal:
- It’s a repository to securely assemble all vendor access details
- A rolling 5 year collection of usage data
- Archive of historical usage statistics reports for year-on-year analysis
- Portal Administrator may grant read-only access to other staff (basically, there can be other user profiles and levels of permissions)
Integration:
SwetsWise Subscriptions is being enhanced to further assist libraries with the challenges of E-Resource Management.
Jim showed several screen shots and examples of what things look like, and then went into the demo. Ann Ercelawn, Roberta Winjum, and Bill Hook all had questions.
John Haar asked if they look at non-journal electronic materials, such as indexes, abstracts, reference books, e-books, etc. Jim responded saying that they are looking into it, and he knows that they are looking closely at e-books.
COUNTER Compliance. This is an important thing. It standardizes the usage statistics.
JSTOR and Springer aren’t included on the list. Neither is LexisNexis and HeinOnline.
Bill Hook asked about how detailed the reports can be. Instead of seeing that 5 people used a database in a month, he wants more detailed information. But it really depends on how detailed the publishers are in providing information to Scholarly Stats.
Flo asked about loading prior years usage data into ScholarlyStats. They won’t automatically do it, but if you have statistics that you have been collecting, you will be able to load the data. Again, they have a rolling 5 years, but that 6th year isn’t lost – it can be saved and archived in whatever way we want.
SOLINET signed an agreement with MPS, affording members up to 25% savings.
He mentioned that UT in Chattanooga is testing out the lowest level (looking at 9 platforms within ScholarlyStats) to see how they like it and to possibly consider consortium pricing. Jim said he hasn’t talked to Therea (the Dean at the Lupton Library at UTC) since January about it.
I talked briefly with Roberta Winjum, Head of Tech Services, about how I know some people at UTC and would be willing to contact them about what their thoughts are regarding ScholarlyStats. ;-)
The number of platforms (levels):
- up to 9
- up to 24
- 38 plus
—- 5 minute break —-
Now Jim is talking about SwetsWise, the features, enhancements, etc.
Key Features:
- Screen Views – subscription, account, and financial information
- Subscription Search
- Order/Review
- Claiming – print and electronic access claims
- Account Grouping
- User Management
- Online Reports
SwetsWise isn’t a static product – they are still developing many features. In June, version 4.4 will be out. By the end of the year, version 5.o will be ready.
Future Additional Features:
- Consolidation -
- Further Account Information
- Bulk Orders and Renewals
- License Bank -
E-Resource Management:
- Gathered data is based on ERMI recommendations
- ILS integration – their first partner was Innovative
- They are using OpenURL to load data
Jim gave a demo of SwetsWise. We currently have this product (I think Chris Waldrop is the administrator) and he talked about new and upcoming features, and how it works for those in the room who did not know much about it.
Other members of Vanderbilt’s ERMS Evaluation Project Team can talk more about the demo and their opinions. I didn’t want to even attempt to capture all that here.
—-
15 people in total attended, including most of OUL and representatives from Central, Peabody, Science, Law, Divinity, Biomedical, Management, Tech Services, Order Services, and LITS. After the ScholarlyStats demo was over, many people left.
Web 2.0 and what it means to libraries April 24, 2007
Posted by Rachel in 2.0, Conferences, Future, Something to think about.add a comment
I was catching up on reading my feeds tonight and I came across David Lee King’s notes from the opening session at Computers in Libraries (which is a cool conference that I would LOVE to go to – maybe next year). Anyway, the opening session was presented by Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. I’ve heard him speak before about Pew surveys results, and the results are always so interesting. But this opening session had a library focus, which was nice. Apparently, Rainie talked about six hallmarks of the web 2.0 world that matter to libraries.
- the internet has become the computer
- content creation
- even more internet users are accessing the content created by others
- many are sharing what they know and feel online and that is building conversations
- tens of thousands are contributing in online … ???
- customizing their online experiences thanks to web 2.0 tools
See all the details and explanations on David’s blog, which always has insightful information.
Enroll in MobileVU, Vanderbilt’s new way of communicating during emergencies April 24, 2007
Posted by Rachel in Announcements.add a comment
The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech has highlighted the importance of rapid and accurate communications during emergency situations, and particularly the value of cell phone text messaging to relay important information. MobileVU, Vanderbilt’s text messaging service, has now added an emergency alert list for all students, faculty and staff. This list will only be used to deliver urgent security information directly to your cell phone in the event of a campus emergency.
There are two ways to sign up for MobileVU:
Online: Visit http://www.vanderbilt.edu/news/mobilevu< and complete the form. Be sure to include your cell phone number and select your mobile carrier and the MobileVU Emergency List.
Over the air: From your phone, send a text (SMS) message with the text VANDY to 27538.
In both cases, a confirmation message will be sent to your cell phone.
All students, faculty and staff are encouraged to enroll in MobileVU, and to keep your information current. With 330 acres, 233 buildings, and as many as 40,000 people on campus during a busy work day, reaching every individual quickly presents a constant challenge. MobileVU is an important addition to the existing communications channels, which include: http://www.vanderbilt.edu, phone, e-mail, broadcast voice mail, warning sirens, building contacts and loudspeakers.
The safety of our campus community is Vanderbilt’s highest priority. Please take a moment to sign up for MobileVU so you can get critical information when it is most important.
Vanderbilt Webpage Redesign April 11, 2007
Posted by Rachel in Announcements.add a comment
Changes have been made to the revised homepage based on comments thus far. Please see the Vanderbilt Homepage Redesign blog for a pdf image of the latest redesign and for more info.
They would really like some additional feedback, so please leave a comment! Thanks
TTSC Meeting, April 10, 2007 April 10, 2007
Posted by Rachel in Blackboard, Computers, LITS, Primo, TTSC Meetings.add a comment
Today I attended our monthly Technology & Training Support Coordinators meeting over in the Baker Building. Jody had a full agenda as usual. Well, I did send him several additional questions ahead of time. ;-)
- Stephen Nordstrom from the Music Library is now going to be joining us as the new music liaison. He’s the Music Cataloger over there.
- Unicorn Patch cluster to be applied -Nancy is working on this, and it will be coming soon. It will help with the custom reports.
- MS patch Tuesday report – As always, the TTSC meets on Patch Tuesday. The latest Microsoft patch will be released to all Heard networked computers tonight. I assume Owen will follow their usual procedures for patches.
- Replacement of older circulating laptops – Recently, there were 11 REALLY old laptops in one of the libraries that were still circulating. LITS is no longer able to purchase support for these laptops, so they have been sent to the Virtual School. New laptops (Dell 620’s) have been purchased with reassessment money. Since the laptops are so heavily used, they wanted to replace them as soon as possible.
- VUnetID authentication for ILLiad – Dale is meeting with the ILLiad group, and so far, things are going well. They are interested in expanding VUnetID authentication to other services, besides the basic login to ACORN and ILLiad. They are using LDAP servers for authentication.
- Status report on Primo project – The next site visit with ExLibris will be April 18th and 19th, next Wednesday and Thursday. Julie Loder has been managing all the reporting of problems via the Primo site in OAK (Blackboard). Currently, only people involved in Primo can log in to view the problems. There are 2 new Primo teams: the TestIt Team, and the Usability Team. The project team charges can be viewed on the Digital Library Steering Committee wiki page. From WML, Cynthia Kutka and Laura Norris are on the project teams. (Rachel and Brent are already on the two various delivery Primo GetIt! teams that have been meeting for some time now. The Primo General Release 1.0 will be out around the middle of May 2007. This version will only contain the basic features, not all of them. Jody joked in saying that there will be things that we are guaranteed to like about Primo, as well as things that we will most definitely hate. He also mentioned that the faceted browsing is working well and will certainly help users, although not all of the facets are working correctly. The system overall seems to be running very fast. He hopes at the end of April that all library staff will be able to have a look at the current version of Primo. And once general release 1.o is out, LITS will begin working with ExLibris toward general release 2.0.
- Vanderbilt Information Technology Services is transitioning all Vanderbilt www.vanderbilt.edu and www3.vanderbilt.edu websites to new server hardware on June 1st. Sites with” vanity” URLs (e.g., its.vanderbilt.edu) are also affected. They have previously communicated this transition to various campus technology groups. We here in Owen are fine. For more info, see this announcement.
- I asked Jody to talk about Blackboard becoming more compatible with Windows Vista, since I knew there were some problems and that freshmen and anyone who gets a new laptop will be encountering problems. Jody said that when using Blackboard in IE7 on Vista (or in Safari on Mac OSX) things don’t work quite right (for example, you cannot save your changes). Blackboard works just fine in Firefox on Vista, I must add. :-) LITS plans on doing a patch level upgrade in June. Blackboard anticipates that this problem will be fixed over the summer. They are holding off the rollout of Vista until summer of 2008 (based on the recommendations from Gartner and others). Also, Vista isn’t entirely compatible with WorkFlows, so Rachel will need to check with Owen IT about their rollout schedule of Vista.
- My second question for Jody was about the email client ITS has chosen (or are getting closer to considering). The Email Task Force is still investigating things, but ITS will primarily be supporting Outlook, it seems. They are migrating incoming students to this environment, as well as small departments. Many individuals are migrating to Outlook as well. Jody reassured those at the meeting who were concerned about security and hackers who hate Microsoft. Jody explained that there are a lot of protections built in that have made it more secure than previous versions. Outlook allows for enriched communication (images, html, etc.) that are a big improvement over Mulberry, and those extras also have settings that can be adjusted for different levels of security. There was a concern in how group mailboxes currently established in Mulberry would be dealt with, and they are investigating imap mailbox issues. But as you know, we here in Owen aren’t really affected by this (not yet) because we are already using Outlook, have exchange servers, and use Active Directory.
- LITS is getting ready to rollout a “lite” RMS for VUPrint and for other groups and services within the library system.
- I also asked Jody if he has heard anything about the servers in Owen moving over to ITS and if it is a push from Matt Hall based on his vision for the campus’s networked architecture? Jody said, no, he hasn’t heard anything. But he did talk about servers hosted in LITS vs. the servers over on Peabody’s campus that are maintained locally by ITS (they can still be maintained remotely too). Jody emphasized that the cost of buying and maintaining the actual server hardware is now dwarfed by the cost of cooling them. The new HVAC system in the General Library Building is coming along okay. They now have plenty of cooling, but are looking to get more power.
That’s all!
The Future of Network Computing at Vanderbilt April 10, 2007
Posted by Rachel in Announcements, Computers, Future.add a comment
What do the next few years hold for Network Computing Architecture? Matt Hall, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Information Technology Services and Associate Chief Information Architect, Infrastructure at Vanderbilt University, peers into his crystal ball for insight into that topic.
Click to view Hall’s presentation Network Computing Architecture 2007-2010 Vision. Allow approximately 30 minutes to watch the presentation.
In addition to discussing prognostication about network computing in the coming years, Hall outlines how Vanderbilt IT leaders will organize core and shared IT infrastructures to best leverage them.
