Blogging Section of SLA-IT

Upcoming Technology Webinars

Interested in some free learning?  There are a couple of free upcoming webinars from the MaintainIT project that you may be interested in:

• Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools and Libraries
    11/3/2008 2:00-3:00 PM Eastern Register: http://tinyurl.com/64b2qs
• Discussing Technology with Library Shareholders
    11/6/2008 2:00-3:00 PM Eastern Register: http://tinyurl.com/5vgmr8

a quick introduction

Bonjour tout le monde!
I thought it was appropriate that my first post be a bit of an introduction.

I'm Amy. I'm a liaison librarian in the Howard Ross Library of Management at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. I'm Canadian. I have a Second Life (as Jambina Oh). I read a lot of blogs. I believe knowledge requires collaboration. I play rugby. And I'm still in shock that I was named a Mover and Shaker by Library Journal in 2008.

I'm really honoured that Catherine and Nicole invited me to start blogging here and hope to get a lot of chat going on about the fun (and not-so-fun) things on the interwebs.

New LISJobs Site

I love LISJobs - it’s a great site to keep an eye on to see what’s going on in the library market and today Rachel Singer Gordon has a big announcement - a New LISJobs site!!

For immediate release: October 24, 2008
Contact: Rachel Singer Gordon ([email protected])

LISjobs.com launches new website

Villa Park, IL — Visitors to LISjobs.com will notice a new look and feel today as the newly-redesigned site launches. The redesign brings LISjobs.com in line with current web standards and adds new content and features. Note that old links will be broken; please update your links and bookmarks.

Highlights of the redesign include:

• Better integration of the LISjobs.com forum and other interactive site features.
• Job ads that, as always, are free to both job seekers and employers.
• New content on education and career development, including information on MLIS scholarships as well as on funding conference attendance and other CE opportunities.
• A more standards-compliant and accessible design.
• A new logo designed by Wendy Koff, Librarian and Web Designer.
• Updated links to outside resources; all links were checked manually in October 2008.
• Improved organization — information for both job seekers and employers is now easier to find.
• Opportunities for sponsorship — relevant organizations can easily reach an audience of librarians and info pros.

“I’m excited to launch the new and improved LISjobs.com to better serve librarians, library workers, and info pros at all stages of their careers,” says webmaster Rachel Singer Gordon. “Stay tuned for more additions and improvements soon!”

Love the new logo? Grab yourself a t-shirt at the new LISjobs.com Cafepress store. Find a job on LISjobs.com? Join the Flickr group, upload your photo, and you could see yourself featured on the site. (Don’t have a Flickr account? Email your photo and story to [email protected].)

LISjobs.com offers:

• Free job ads
• Free bimonthly professional development newsletter
• Low-cost resume posting
• A library career- and professional development-related online discussion forum
• Career Q&A from Susanne Markgren and Tiffany Allen
• Rethinking Information Careers, a regular column by Kim Dority
• … and more!

Come, explore, join in, and become part of the LISjobs.com community.

Technorati Tags: lisjobs, careers, jobs

Article: Social Networking Grows Up

At last, it seems like the value of social networking is being recognized by "the establishment." Quoting the article:

Have you ever minimized your Facebook browser window when your supervisor walked past your desk, afraid you might appear unprofessional? Social-networking guilt may soon be a thing of the past as a new breed of social networking sites for scientists clamor to be the next great timesaver in the lab--for you and your supervisor. These science-specific, Web-based networks combine handy library and document-sharing tools with a social twist. Such sites permit scientists to "help out each other with protocols, discuss topics, prepare for scientific meetings, maybe even show off your research a little bit," says social network user Erika Gyengesi, a neuroscience postdoc at Yale University.

Sites mentioned include:

• labmeeting
• MyNetResearch
• Connotea
• ResearchGate 
• ResearchConnect
• SmallWorlds

The article notes that no site is dominating the scene thus far, so a scientist may need to try several sites and then decide which one fits her.

LibraryThing Reviews in your Catalog

I love LibraryThing (and the staff at LibraryThing).  They come up with some of the best tools.  Anyway, I just got a sneak peak of 'Reviews at my Library' from LibraryThing after reading a short post at the Thingology blog. 

We'll be at Internet Librarian in Monterey, CA, Monday-Wednesday. We're at booth 316, in the boonies, I think.

We'll be showing off LibraryThing for Libraries and our new "Reviews at my Library."

We're going to blog "Reviews at My Library" on Monday or Tuesday, but you can take a sneak peak at reviews in action at High Plains Library District or Los Gatos Public Library.

I can't wait to read more, but for now you can see the demos linked to above.

Biblioblogosphere stardom

Steven Bell posted some musings about biblioblogosphere stardom on the ACRL blog. Niche market and steady content are the main conditions to become a blogging star, according to him.

Get Open Office

I have been using Open Office on and off for years, but I must say that the newest release makes me want to stick to it.  This from Lifehacker:

The download may have hit a server near you last week, but today OpenOffice.org 3.0—the open-source Microsoft Office alternative—gets its official release. The OO.org servers have been hit hard, but so far download speeds seem to be holding up well.

If you haven't tried it - now's a good time to give it a whirl.

iPhone more popular than Kindle for reading books

According to Forbes, it's now official:

The iPhone is more popular than Amazon.com's Kindle. And not just in the obvious categories like listening to music, browsing the Web or the other applications where Kindle barely competes. Now, the iPhone is also muscling into Amazon's home turf: reading books.

Stanza, a book reading application offered in Apple's iPhone App Store since July, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to Portland, Ore.-based Lexcycle, the three-person start-up that created the reading software.

By comparison, Citigroup estimates Amazon will sell around 380,000 Kindles in 2008.

Stanza has the advantage of being free and the titles it provides are free as well - although those are  free domain and creative commons titles. On the minus size, eye strain and rapid battery usage. But, if you already have an iPhone, why not?

UPDATE: I've added the link to the Forbes articles, heh

The après-Vista

Does your library or office use Vista? Microsoft just announced the upcoming prebeta launch of its new OS, the laconically named "Windows 7". 7 refers to the fact that this is the seventh release of Windows (although others differ). Release should be late 2009, early 2010. So you still have time to get used to Vista.

As for my own place of employment, we haven't switch to Vista yet. Just switching to Office 2007 was traumatic enough for some. If money is available, the users of the new computers bought this year will have the option of retrofitting to XP if desired.