Libology Blog

100 Free Open Courseware Classes About Open Source Everything is a post on the BSchool.com Blog.  Their list is quite comprehensive, with something for just about anyone.

In addition, the blog has a thing for “100 Free…” lists, from resource for doing business in China, to Ivy League business courses.  They just started up last month, but I think this might be one of those resources that will provide answers for questions beyond the obvious business school related information.

found via an e-mail from Kelly Sonora (affiliated with BSchool.com blog)

A Simple Book Repair Manual is a web-based guide created and hosted by the Dartmouth College Library.  It covers what a library needs to set up a toolkit and make straightforward repairs.

Conservation Book Repair : A training manual by Artemis BonaDea is a pdf formatted book from 1995 (200 pages - complete 12MB pdf here) written by a Conservation Technician (who is now Curator of the Alaska Heritage Museum).

Bookbinding and the Conservation of books : A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, hosted on the Stanford University web site, is exactly as described, a dictionary of terminology.

Add these to your collection of useful links!

found via MetaFilter (warning : as addictive a blog as exists anywhere)

A couple of posts about sandboxes have caught my eye:

• LISNews posted about Peter Morville (writer of Ambient Findability, which if you haven’t read - you should) and his Flickr “sandbox for collecting search examples, patterns, and anti-patterns.”
• Roy Tennant writes about the benefits of libraries having a sandbox to try out new software and technology, in particular he points out the University of Cincinnati’s sandbox.

I have, in a somewhat disorganized manner, been creating and working with sandboxes for several years.  Libology is, at least in its first phase, my effort to make a structured sandbox for my own efforts, with an eye towards demonstrating how various tools can work for libraries.  These have been scattered throughout several other domains, and one of my first tasks will be to combine what I have done so far under one domain.

Web hosting is inexpensive.  A site that can run blogs, discussion lists, wikis, CMSs, and a great many other helpful tools can be had for about $5 per month.  An individual or group, taking things one step at a time, can learn a lot from simply getting a site and setting up various software.  There is no better way, in my opinion, to learn about open source and web 2.0 than to jump in the sandbox and start playing!

The Librarian Song (YouTube video) is, well, a song… about librarians… specifically about how librarians train users (Show it to them, do it with them, and then the user can do it themself).

And above all… it is really funny (as well as slightly risque).

found via Extensible Librarian

Recipes for a 5-Star Library is the latest “cookbook” from the MaintainIT project.  The cookbooks are pdf files that are free to use

The project focuses on public computers in libraries, and their Library Spotlight articles are drawn from real-world examples.  The resources they provide are top-notch and collaboration at their best.

If you work with your library’s public workstations, check out what they have to offer.  Tips and solutions from dozens of libraries await you!

found via Free Range Librarian

The Library of Congress  web site has a collection of webcasts that they use for docent training.  If you would like to learn about some of the collections within in the library, this is a fantastic way to do so!

from ResourceShelf

Within Range , a training game from Carnegie Mellen University Libraries, has several strikes against it : it is flash-based, it only trains in LC classification, and it was rated “worst game” on reddit.com.

Otherwise, it is a pretty good resource for people learning to shelf LC cataloged items!

found via LISNews

10 Ways to Make Your Library Great in 2008—via Web 2.0 is a webinar being held next week that promises to be very informative.  The focus is on social networking and how libraries and library staff can approach new technologies for improving services.  They will be archiving the presentation, so those of us who aren’t available to view it live can have a chance to see it.

I will stress that Web 2.0 (and Library 2.0) is best approached piecemeal.  Pick and choose those elements that will work for you and your situation.  Do not be afraid to try something new, to experiment with that which is in place, and to abandon that which isn’t working for you.  In the end you will have learned quite a bit about your library, your patrons, and technology - and everyone will be better off for it!

However, some library people just don’t like the word Webinar….

from a post by Ed Rossman (the webinar presenter) on Web4Lib

Larry Ferlazzo’s blog is titled appropriately : Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day for Teaching ELL, ESL, and  EFL.   What caught my attention is that he is compiling lists of web resources that contain great sites that should be kept in mind not only for a variety of reference questions, regardless of the English language ability of the person asking the question, but for the many great tools and resources that we can use in library training and education.

A few of his 2007 lists:

• Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education
• Best Science Websites for Students and Teachers
• Best Online Learning Games
• Best Social Studies Websites
• Best Search Engines for ESL/EFL Learners

There are more beyond these, and his blog is a constant review/overview/discussion of web sites and resources.

found via TechCrunch

Karen Coyle has written a post on Coyle’s InFormation that I feel greatly helps to explain why it can be so complex to structure bibliographic information.

I first encountered Entity-Relationships (note:  right now this link is not a great introduction to the concept, but provides some good examples) when learning to create queries and reports from a Voyager database.  It was intimidating, to say the least, but was one of several steps that proved to be extremely helpful.

The diagrams, for whatever they represent, usually mirror the complexity of the system they represent.  They oftentimes are the most effective way to show this.

Understanding this complexity in bibliographic structure is important, I feel, because it allows us library types to better evaluate the tools that we use and select.  An OPAC search screen, or an ILS module, or any program we use is more useful when its structure better fits the entity-relationship that already exists for our materials.  A spreadsheet is great for certain types of information and presentation; a word processor for others.  A program that doesn’t fit the structure so well tends to be “clunky” to use in that context.

Read her post.  Repeat as necessary.  Don’t feel that you need to memorize the detail, or be able to re-create her diagrams.  Simply get the gist of what she has put into words and pictures, and know that it will help you in your daily work, and in your understanding of how things work.

WebJunction has launched a Rural Library Sustainability Online Course, and it’s free!

Their site has the following synopsis of the course:

• Visit each of the seven areas of interest critical to sustaining public access computing in your library.
• View case studies of rural libraries that have developed and completed an action plan in each of the areas.
• Create an action plan for your library by assessing your library’s current state and selecting achievable six month goals.
• Follow manageable steps from peer-recommended resources to accomplish your goals.
• Explore each area of the course at your own pace and return to any lesson at your own convenience.

found on BlogJunction

No brand new flashy sites in this post; just a small collection of links on how one deals with the demands of time, projects and learning:

Big or Small? — Jen Riley at the Indiana University Digital Library Program has a post regarding doing a few big vs. many small projects.

Nicole’s Burnout Blues — Karen Schneider, a.k.a. Free Range Librarian, gives her tips on preventing burnout.

Three Hard Things — new guy at OCLC Roy Tennant’s follow-up to his Five Easy Pieces essay three years ago.

Each of these pieces speak to me, as I am preparing to start a relatively involved project that will require a fair amount of time management.  It could work, mainly because the time involved can be very flexible (and who needs sleep when you have a project?).

However, most everyone I know is trying to balance their time, effort, energy, and resources.  Perhaps there is a helpful nugget or two for everyone who follows the links….

A post, Getting change to stick, at Karen Coomb’s blog, has me thinking about change and growth, but not in an institutional sense, but in more of a personal sense.

I think people can fall into the same trap:  we push our envelopes, learning, trying new things, and cannot perceive the subtler changes and growth that occur.  It can take hindsight to see what we have learned and how we have developed.

The trick is to keep pushing that envelope, keep trying and learning, and not to lose that long-term perspective that seems to be critical.

Chinese Learning Objects, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and provided by the National Foreign Language Center, are online materials for learning to read Chinese.  The good news is that, starting in July 2007, the materials will be available for no charge online.

If you have a desire to learn to read Chinese, or know someone who might, this is a great opportunity.

from ResourceShelf

Advice to a slightly less experienced geek librarian is written by Daniel Chudnov at One Big Library, and is an excellent essay with good advice for anyone exploring new ways to do things in libraries.  I can vouch for a few points that he makes, and will try to be prepared to follow the rest!

from One Big Library

Jenn Riley recently posted an essay on the TechEssence blog titled Involving more librarians and library staff in technology projects.  It is well worth reading, and provokes a couple of thoughs of my own:

Every staff member, librarian, and administrator should be involved in projects.  More importantly, they should be involved in projects that involve skills they don’t currently use and information not directly related to their current job.

Why?  The more you know about what other people’s jobs entail, the better you will be able to understand how your own work fits into the bigger picture.  Additionally, you may come into contact with tools and approaches that can be applied to your area.  It is much harder to discover what you don’t know if you aren’t exploring new areas.

You also must be given room to fail.  A good administrator is not necessarily a good cataloger, and vice-versa.  Each will still benefit from working in the other’s area, and even ideas or effort that fall short will add to the organization.

Notice that I don’t specifically refer to technology, unlike the essay that inspired this.  This is because the issue is much greater than any one approach, and is helpful in more ways than we can know.

Everything is connected to everything else….

Copyright Resources on the Web is an excellent and very comprehensive collection of links to, whaddayaknow, copyright resources on the web.

from ResourceShelf

ALA’s ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) has posted an interesting article called “Developing a long-range and outreach plan for your academic library: The need for a marketing outreach plan“. It describes a series of promotional activities to market an academic library to the campus as a whole.

I am not sure that their approach is, as a whole, what a campus library needs for promotion. Their initial budget is $10,000, which I suspect is waaay beyond most marketing budgets, even for many of the larger libraries.

Some of the expense seems high: $3,000 annually for an e-newsletter, which although it includes the creation of a newsletter designed to reach 5,000 people, shouldn’t require more than someone who can create a listserv and design a good, basic template to contain the articles. Web hosting services usually offer some sort of site statistics in their packages.

I could consult with a library, helping to get it started and training someone on staff to keep it running, and not have it cost more than $600 dollars (and it wouldn’t require more than $70 per year to keep it going, as long as they used the tools and resources developed in the initial consultation.

Also: $4,000 of the cost is for signs and promotional giveaways. These are great: you need well-made signs, and giveaways are neat. Buy a bunch of customized pens, create your own bookmarks, and be creative in finding other things that your students will use that you can “brand”. However, I would skip the stickers, and make the money go a lot further than the few hundred students who would actually get the swag listed in the article.

Academic libraries that could consider spending $10,000 on this type of promotion (few and far between) are likely to be able to tap into campus resources for signs, promotions, and technical support. Those who cannot afford that type of money (most of us) can still do a great deal to promote their services, and oftentimes have a great deal of on-campus support to draw upon.

I recommend creative brainstorming among the library staff, with some funds available to support good ideas. The ideas themselves are free (as in priceless), and should be the core of your promotional activities. Plus, the library staff become part of the promotion, which is a bonus.

All of this, of course, has been my $0.02 (and assorted other change)

original link from ResourceShelf

Weed of the Month doesn’t have anything to do with gardening (although that topic is covered) but with weeding library materials.  Organized by Dewey Decimal Classification, it is an excellent overview of de-selection issues by topic area.

from Catalogablog

Social and Cultural Foundations of Education will be an interesting course at Old Dominion University, as the coursework will not be taken from the textbook, it will be the textbook.

In what may be a first for an undergraduate class, the project for the semester is the creation and editing of an open access textbook that will be used and further edited by future students of the course.

I, for one, suspect that the students will learn a great deal more this way than by the traditional methods of learning. It is definitely tougher when you are creating that which will be used by others, than by simply using it.

from Open Access News