I’ve spent the last couple of days being inspired by Brendan Dawes‘ book “Analog In, Digital Out“, and playing around with ImageMagick and PerlMagick.
This evening, I felt like doing something for Kathryn Greenhill to commiserate with her for not winning the “Best Librarian/Library Blog” Edublog awards, so here’s what you get if you take ImageMagick, 30 minutes of furious Perl coding, a little bit of random font rotation, a suitable JPEG source image, and the RSS feed from Kathryn’s blog…
I thought Jessamyn West‘s photo might also make for a cool textual mashup too…
In other news, Michael Stephens has gone a little dotty…
Author: Dave
BBC Breakfast News items about YouTube
I briefly mentioned this item from the BBC Breakfast News during Jane Dysart‘s session at Online Information 2007…
History lessons online
Three teachers are using the website YouTube to teach history. 60 films have been posted online covering topics such as D-Day, Bloody Sunday, the Slave Trade, Vietnam and Mary Queen of Scots.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/…)
The videos are available on YouTube, along with the TV interview.
Apart from the serendipity of it linking in with Jane’s session, what impressed me the most was that a news programme was actually featuring a really positive story about YouTube. The majority of news items I’ve seen before have been generally negative, e.g.:
- Italian ‘pornoprof’ is suspended
- Teenage gang jailed for killing
- Teachers in websites closure call
- Police consider YouTube charges
If your place of work has banned access to YouTube, then positive stories like schoolhistory might be a useful tool for questioning such draconian measures.
“Engaging the Xbox generation of Learners in Higher Education”
Just a little pointer towards a report recently released by Jebar Ahmed and Mary Sheard in the School of Education at the University of Huddersfield:
New generation learners seem to be surrounded by technologies everywhere, at home, at school and in their pockets. Computers and interactive white boards are available in the classrooms, but how do these learners engage with technologies to actually learn? And what can we learn from them to inform teaching in HE?
The Executive Summary is available here.
Brian Kelly – Man of the Year!
Just a quick post to add my congratulations to Brian Kelly for picking up the “IWR Information Professional of the Year” award at Online Information 2007!
Unfortunately I didn’t get chance to snap a photo of Brian with said award, but I did grab this one of Richard Wallis (from Talis) pretending that it was his…
The celebrations went on to an ungodly hour at both Maggie Jones’s…
…and the “Prince of Wales” pub…
…and the hotel corridor looked a little like this at 1am in the morning…
Online Information 2007 – Day One
Shhhhhh – I’m trying to type very quietly, whilst sat at the back of the room whilst a presentation is going on 😉
I finally managed to get myself onto the free wi-fi at Online Information 2007, so just a quick blog post in case I lose the connection!
If anyone at the conference wants to chat, there’s always Gabbly.
I’ve also got a lovely new box of Moo cards, which I hope to give out.
By the way, if anyone wants to recommend a decent non-expensive restaurant somewhere near Kensington or Bayswater, then please do!
Spellchecker + Network Effect = Better Spellchecker?
I’ve been having a few email discussions relating to whether or not it’s best to use a standard dictionary of words for an OPAC spellchecker or an index created from the actual holdings of that library…
Standard dictionary
pros: correct spelling
cons: suggestion might not find any results, might not contain buzz/new words
Custom dictionary
pros: suggestions should find results
cons: will contain mis-spellings (e.g. “mangement”), needs regular updates, might be difficult to extract the words from ILS/LMS/OPAC
I’m beginning to think that the best of both worlds might be to start with a standard dictionary and then let your users/patrons build upon that. In other words, whenever someone carries out a successful keyword search on the OPAC, automatically add the keyword(s) they used to your dictionary so that they can appear as spelling suggestions in the future.
Any comments?
HIPpie “Did you mean?” ready for testing
I’ve just finished plugging the first bit of HIPpie into our test OPAC:
I’m gonna be out of the office for most of next week (3 days in London at Online Information 2007), but I’ll start contacting those of you who said you’d like to be involved with the testing. The test code just requires you to paste a short block of JavaScript into one of the HIP stylesheets (searchinput.xsl).
At present, the version I’ve plugged into our test OPAC uses a generic US word list, but the idea is to allow libraries to either upload their own word lists or choose from country specific ones.
Although the code needs to be able to create links that contain the HIP profile string and the session ID, neither of these are actually passed back to the server at Huddersfield (just in case session privacy is an issue).
Patrick Stewart in the Library
It’s not every day that you get a former Captain of the starship Enterprise in your Library, but today was one of those days! Patrick Stewart is the current Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield, and was born just down the road in Mirfield.
The refurbished library opened it’s doors to students in September (see photos), but today was the official opening ceremony of the Student Centre (which is the entrance floor of the library). To celebrate the event, we had a string quartet playing in the foyer, and Patrick Stewart gave a speech and unveiled a plaque.
No sooner had Patrick walked in, he headed straight for the Info Desk…
Lisa (left) is looking slightly surprised and that’s my better half Bryony sat on the right.
After an entertaining speech…
…Patrick unveiled the plaque…
…drinks were served…
…and he personally thanked the library staff for their hard work over summer…
I’d thoroughly recommend getting a string quartet to play in your library entrance — it definitely sets a nice ambience 🙂
CILIP, York
Many thanks to everyone for the chance to speak at yesterday’s CILIP event in York, held in the Science Learning Centre Yorkshire.
There’s some more photos from the event on Flickr.
I did promise to post the slides, and they are now available on slideshare.net at www.slideshare.net/daveyp/york-cilip.
The links used in the presentation were:
Continue reading “CILIP, York”
What day of the week is it?
I’m getting to the point where I don’t know if I’m coming or going, but I do know I’m having a lot of fun!
Yesterday was the JIBS Workshop in London (photos here & presentation here). There’s lots I’d like to say about the debate that ended the workshop — especially regarding Nick Woolley’s narrow definition of “Library 2.0” — but it’ll have to wait for another day. In the meantime, if you’ve not seen it before, I’d recommend reading Cites & Insights 6.2 (from late 2005) for Walt Crawford‘s take on the various early definitions of Library 2.0.
Tomorrow it’s a 90 minute workshop on “2.0” (with the emphasis on play) at the National Science Learning Centre in York.
Today was really cool — Cathy Slaven (Library Systems Manager, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia) dropped in to sunny* Huddersfield for a few hours of “2.0” chat, a bit of mutual Pixies worship, and a swift half of Black Sheep at the Head of Steam. If there isn’t a Facebook group called “Library Systems Managers who like the Pixies” yet, then there should be!
I’m extremely grateful that she chose to make Huddersfield one of her stopping points in her brief tour of the UK and Ireland, and I could have happily chatted all day long! All the very best wishes for the rest of your visit Cathy, and I hope you enjoy travelling through Europe to Vienna 🙂
Next week, I’m heading off to OCLC’s office in Leiden for a day long developer’s meeting. The day after, I need to be in Stoke-on-Trent for the SirsiDynix Symphony Development Forum. The trouble is, I’ve just discovered that there are no trains after 9:35pm from Birmingham International Airport to Stoke-on-Trent (where I’m already booked into a hotel) and I don’t land until 9:45pm! If I’m lucky, I should be able to get the last stopping train to either Stafford or Crewe, then a 15 mile taxi ride to Stoke-on-Trent, and hopefully arrive at the hotel sometime after midnight :-S
The week after that, it’s Online Information 2007 (which lasts 3 days).
…roll on the Christmas holidays! 😉
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* I lie, it rained… it rained a lot!