A library on your block?

This is a cool idea!

Little Free Library can help put a library on your corner »

I happened upon this mini-library in my neighborhood and am so impressed with the movement that Little Free Library has started that I am getting one together for our street. The concept is simple: pu...

Arc d' Libris

Not a recommended shelving method!

nabokovsnotebook: Aspen Mays went to every... »

nabokovsnotebook: “ Aspen Mays went to every college and university library in Illinois and cleared the shelves of Einstein books (1500+). Then she made them into chair-rainbows. Something tells me......

Google vs. Bing

Google is heading towards a semantic search and Bing towards a social search.... interesting....

Anyone can use the new Bing now. Here’s how to get it »

Last week Bing announced a massive product redesign, dramatically changing its interface, and promising a slew of new features that would help it drive growth and differentiate from ...

A larger iPhone...

As a bespectacled librarian, I applaud the idea of a slightly larger screen. I need a magnifying glass for some displays on my iPhone!

TechCrunch | It’s Time For A Larger iPhone »

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Apple is currently ordering larger screens for the next iPhone. With the usual nonsense, the WSJ cited people familiar with the matter and stated the...

Proquest is getting into the direct to consumer game with Udini.

Thoughtful post below about implications for librarians...

Frequently Questioned Answers: Not-quite-open library access for Open Education »

One of the big problems for the Open Education Movement has been the lack of access to scholarly resources, such as the scholarly journals that libraries subscribe to individually or as part of articl...

Online classes moving backward to print?

Vickie Kline

10:53 AM  -  Public via Google+

Online classes moving backward to print?

This is one permutation I didn't expect!

At Yale, Online Lectures Become Lively Books - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education »

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and other institutions are old hands now at taking course material from the classroom and lab and putting it online for learners anywher...

A call to revise copyright for out-of-print/orphan works.

Vickie Kline

2:11 PM  -  

+1'd on www.latimes.com

  -  Public via Google+

A universal digital library is within reach »

Since 2002, at first in secret and later with great fanfare, Google has been working to create a digital collection of all the world's books, a library that it hopes will last forever and make knowl...

Digital Public Library of America

Vickie Kline

1:54 PM  -  

+1'd on www.technologyreview.com

  -  Public via Google+

Nicholas Carr writes an excellent overview of the nascent DPLA project.

The Library of Utopia - Technology Review »

Google's ambitious book-scanning program is foundering in the courts. Now a Harvard-led group is launching its own sweeping effort to put our literary heritage online. Will the Ivy League succeed wher...

Google Scholar Metrics

Vickie Kline

9:42 AM  -  Public via Google+

Google Scholar Metrics

I heard rumblings about this. Will be interesting to see if scholars agree with Google's algorithms for this...

Google starts ranking journals - Web Exclusive Article - Significance Magazine »

The main flaw with the impact factor is that it is basically an arithmetic mean and, consequently, sensitive to outliers. Like a megastar that pulls all the lesser celestial bodies towards itself, one...

Free-Range Learners

Vickie Kline

6:57 PM  -  Public via Google+

I love the concept of "Free-Range Learners" - it describes me perfectly. I've stopped considering another advanced degree; I don't want to be penned in a formal learning environment anymore.... As an educator, I realize the irony of this. It's not that I don't want to learn, it's more than the traditional classroom/course doesn't fit my reality now. Example: As I write this, I'm listening to a discussion about use of Google+ and Hangouts in higher education on the Google Education on Air virtual conference.

‘Free-Range Learners’: Study Opens Window Into How Students Hunt for Educational Content Online - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education »

Milwaukee — Digital natives? The idea that students are superengaged finders of online learning materials once struck Glenda Morgan, e-learning strategist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champ...

Chasing Purple Squirrels

Vickie Kline

2:44 PM  -  Public

OK, I added this one for the title alone. After reading the post, I realized that I'm trying to morph into a purple squirrel!  Appropriate for a squirrelly librarian, no?

Chasing Purple Squirrels »

The job market has gotten complicated lately – and not just for people out hunting for work. For those of us on the other side of the equation things are just as challenging (try and remember the last...

This is one of the best articles I've read about library assessment.

Vickie Kline

10:35 AM  -  Public  via Google+

This is one of the best articles I've read about library assessment.

In the Library with the Lead Pipe » Answering questions about library impact on student learning »

This essay reports on a project which evaluated the Understanding Library Impacts (ULI) protocol, a suite of instruments for detecting and communicating library impact on student learning. The project...

Rant for the day.

Vickie Kline

10:25 AM  -  Public   via Google+

Rant for the day.

In the linked article below, Brian Matthews describes a frustration that I've been wrestling more and more. The information I want is available, but not in an interface that allows me to work with it that way I want.

Examples:

If I want to post this post to Blogger (also a Google product), I have to copy the text and use a "New Post " Browser extension to do it. If I want to share it to Twitter, I need to use a different G+ extension. And if I want to post to LinkedIn, I have to pay monthly for the extension. (I'd tell you what it the extension is, but it only works in Chrome about half the time - this is one of the times that it didn't load).

Another one - I like to share images from 500px to Pinterest. If I use the 500px app on my iPad or any of the feed reader streams for 500px, there is no "Pin It" button. For a "Pin it" button I have to go to a laptop or workstation with a full browser. But if I use the button, it doesn't capture the metadata for the photograph, so I can't give credit to the photographer unless I cut and paste pieces of the metadata by hand Solution? I go to the 500px app on the iPad. Email myself the pictures (which sends them with the metadata). I then open the image link, click the "Pin it" button in the browser, and copy the metadata from the email.

And one more - has anyone found an ideal feed reader? I started with Google Reader, but the iPad app version doesn't have all the sharing options.
Tried Google Current and Flipboard, but they don't track unread vs read. Not good if you can't read every day. Using Feedly now, but the display options always seem to be either too little or too much. So you choose between too much scrolling or too much clicking. I end up emailing myself individual articles so I can read and share them later.

In my search for the perfect feed reader, I'm beginning to feel like the Princess and the Pea. Each new one seems comfortable until I find that darn little bump.

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The (Social) Reader’s Dilemma: Content + Container = Context - The Ubiquitous Librarian - The Chronicle of Higher Education »

“Content, not containers!” This has been a library theme for a while now: unbundling the meat from the sandwich. It's about the text and/or images, not necessary the printed vessel. As scholarly m...