Date: November 9th, 2010
Time: 12:30 – 1:30pm
Location: SLAIS Terrace Lab

Presenters and their “cool tools” (also available as a PDF)

Will “Firebug & Firesheep”
Firebug

• Shows html, css for each element in a web page
• Can test/see how styles were implemented to specific elements
• Look at layout (ex. pixels in padding & layout)
• Other features – will tell you what elements are causing issues if pages are having trouble loading
• Can help identify errors/messy code (it’s nice to have clean code)

Firesheep Sidejacking

• People can use cookies to steal your information
• Dealing with cookies – install it in your firefox for when using wifi networks
• Making sure you use secure wifi networks
• Should see https if the wifi is secure instead of http

Alex “Yahoo Pipes”

• Interface is confusing, but should be aware of the tool
• Can send RSS feed links to friends etc.
• Can use for sending filtered (types of) images from flickr

Meghan “cIRcle”

• UBC Digital repository
• SLAIS graduates’ work are not being heavily represented
• Contribution to cIRcle helps increase visibility, helps students, helps for future job opportunities (ex. can send employers links to works)
• Uses open source software
• Think about submitting your papers for showcasing your work
• In sending paper, student is not giving up copyright
• Just need to 1) sign form to say cIRcle can showcase it on the site, and 2) have a professor email cIRcle saying “yes this is a good paper.”

Catie “blekko”

• Search engine uses slash tags in search box
• ex. search query can be watchdog /Christian … Recipes /vegan … Recipes /vegan/ gluten-free … etc.
• If a slash tag doesn’t exist in the list of slash tags, you can add it to the user index
• The user generated libraries added to the index is makes this search engine different
• So the user searches through the site’s original list of slash tags and users’ added slash tags

Tosha “GazoPa”

• Image search engine
• Search by image (not by keywords – no words needed)
• Upload, draw, or type in URL of image to search
• For example, upload an image and get results of similar images and information on how similar retrieved results are to the searched image
• Can change view of results
• Good for finding information with an image that would be very difficult to describe using words
• Has flickr option, so you can search through license types for images (fair use or copyright)
• Can retrieve information about the subject in the image
• Advanced search with colours, shapes etc. to find other related images
• Cross-language
• If you upload your photo, it doesn’t get added to the images searched – but it does stay on their server
• You can add text to your image

Cynthia “Foxit”

• free for downloads
• PDF reader tool if you want something different from Adobe
• Can add annotations/notes to all pdf texts (not same restrictions as in Adobe)
• Text recognition is a little wonky, but still okay
• Add notes to highlighted sections of the text (icon put in the margin)
• Write comments in the margins of the text (easy to add and delete)
• All notes are visible and readible in the actual document

Alex “Mendeley”

• Mendeley is another type of reader that also allows for annotation in notes and also is good for creating bibliographies.
• Foxit is good for editing pdf when done (ex. good for signing a pdf document etc.)
• In January a PDF conference in california will be held for fixing the tool

Justin “ebook management”
Calibre

• Open source e-book management
• Tag all books, metadata
• Conversion tool – take a pdf and convert to other style of document
• Features include ability to set it up to sync through wireless to your phone from your desktop at home
• Built in e-reader (for epubs and other ebook formats)
• Possibly useful for annotation – need to explore that option

ManyBooks.Net

• didn’t want to be locked into the system from Amazon/Kindle
• Good site for finding public domain ebooks with better interface than Project Gutenberg itself
• Can browse through different categories – ex. creative commons
• Get in different formats (html etc.)
• Also check Baen who have a good good selection of older or advanced reader copies for sci-fi DRM free and for cheap.

Qinqin “Wink”

• Free download – capture screen shots for creating instructional videos etc.
• Can set it to capture many screen shots/frames over a set period of time
• Can use voice overs/audio track to accompany video
• Create video project of frames taken, edit frames, copy and paste frames, set time duration for viewing of each frame
• Set streaming medium in firefox
• File size is very small
• Can send to friends
• Compatible for Mac and PC use
• Limited features, but good for creating basic videos

Shannon “What I Learned Today”

• Blog by Nicole C. Engard (Director of Open Source Education for open source library systems)
• Talks a lot about gadgets
• Library based tech blog and other library related topics that might not be found elsewhere
• Useful for keeping track of information related issues
• For example, getting announcements about Facebook’s privacy setting changes etc.

Comments/suggestions from participants:

In posting summary notes of tools presented, tools should be hyperlinked to their live web urls.

Attention all SLAIS students and faculty,

With all the positive feedback and suggestions from our last Cool Tool Day, we’ve decided to have another event! All are welcome, no previous tech skills or knowledge required. If you want to give an informal 5 minute talk about a “cool tool” you like using or heard about, a sign up sheet will be posted soon.

The date: November 9, 2010… the time: 12:30 – 1:30… the location: Terrace Lab

Coffee and cookies will be served in the SLAIS lounge right after the event!

For those of you who missed the last event, here’s a recap of who presented what.

Welcome to our new website. It is like the old websites, except singular!

If you missed our Cool Tools Day in October, well, I’m sorry. Here’s what we talked about (also available as a PDF). Just to show there’s no hard feelings.

Bronwyn’s “iTunes & Audio Podcasts”
Visit iTunes website for free available podcasts including:

• TechNews TodayThis Week in Tech (TWIT)
• MacBOOK weekly
• This week in Google
• Search Engine – net neutrality and copyright
• Spark from CBC radio – lifestyle and tech

Alex’s “Pure Text“
For Windows users:

• Application stevemiller.net/puretext
• Keyboard shortcuts that allow you to maintain font and formatting when copying & pasting text

For Mac users:

• Visit alternativeto.net (similar to the process of using Firefox add-ons)
• Browse site for applications you want to use
• Select application and then click on “Visit Website”
• Download application to your browser

Franklin’s “Data Visualization: Many Eyes“

• Website: http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
• Good place to find data sets
• Good place to share data sets (warning: no way to keep data sets private so careful about uploading data sensitive documents)
• Can do tricks with mapping
• Provides options for visualizing data (example: using tag clouds, word trees, bubble chart, etc.)
• Alternative website: visualizing.org (It is free, but new – so it is still being built)

Will’s “UBC Blogs & UBC Wiki”
UBC Blogs:

• Digital Learning Commons
• All you need is your CWL to make a blog or website
• Social media aspect to blogs are groups, forums, profiles, friends, etc.
• About 6000 people are using the service now
• Built using WordPress
• Supports custom CSS in themes
• Consider it a content management platform (rather than a blog platform)

UBC Wiki:

• Functions on Media Wiki software
• It is not private, anyone can edit
• Based on philosophical ownership, not structural
• Your CWL should last “forever”

Jonathan’s “WilsonWeb”

• Audio capability for reading/hearing articles off of WilsonWeb interface
• Can download audio files as well as text
• Can listen to audio while following along with the html text (words are highlight as they are read)

Trevor’s “OneNote“

• Virtual notebook
• Can organize into binders – notebooks – pages
• Can type anywhere on screen/page (not line-based)
• Can keep all different kinds of documents/files in one page (so that you have all related documents in one place)
• Can link from it
• Takes good snapshots of pages & will include url of html pages (only difficult doing this with pdfs)
• Can keyword search through ALL One Note documents at once
• Autosaves along the way (no save button)
• Create shared notebooks
• Can draw on page
• Saves time in filing
• visitmix website – works with silverlight

Schuyler’s “Search Shortcuts in Google Chrome”

• Edit search engines
• Can set up keyword shortcuts for different sites
• Add to google toolbar add to chrome search
• Example: type “gs” for google scholar
• Might be able to do sim in FireFox
• Another tool is Yubnub
• Can set Yubnub into Chrome search bar and execute yubnub commands directly into your search

Schuyler’s “Dropbox & GoodReader“

• Backup option
• Stored in the cloud
• Can stop using usb keys (all you need is access to the internet)
• Can invite collaborators to your folders
• For iphones, load GoodReader to navigate into your Dropbox account

Frankin’s “Portable apps“

• Website: Portableapps.com
• Legitimate site
• Can store on usb key without having to download applications onto the computer’s hard drive
• Good way of getting around restrictions of downloading

Last Thursday, March 4, UBC’s ASIS&T student organization hosted another in its recurring student-led workshop series. Members Alex Garnett and Justyna Berzowska led 20-minute presentations on the open source citation management platform Zotero, and the collaborative wiki solution PBworks, respectively.

Approximately twenty SLAIS students were in attendance. Alex began with a functional overview of how to import several different resource types into Zotero, as well as how to make use of its built-in web annotation and PDF metadata lookup features. He concluded with a demonstration of the Microsoft Word 2007 Zotero plugin, using just a few clicks to compile a brief bibliography of the books, journal articles, and websites he’d worked through as examples.

Justyna began the workshop’s second half with an overview of best practices for using PBworks, including effective sidebar management and the logistics of embedding files in the workspace. She also provided a demonstration of some of the embeddable “gadgets” available within PBworks (e.g. a calendar), noting a favorite quandary of web design: “Is this useful or shiny?”.

Both students remained afterward to answer questions and engage participants with the software in greater depth. Cheers, guys!

by: Ro McKernan

Today was the final day of the 2009 ASIST Conference and it was sad to walk out of a session and see everything being all packed up.  The last two days were a whirlwind of sessions, if you haven’t checked out the conference backchannel do so and read the thoughts from the participants to get a sense of what people thought were the most salient points during each session (and other conference news). Very insightful.  It would be interesting to see if they organize the twitters a little more next year so that every session gets some coverage (although anything about social media may get flocked) as well as whether ASIST is going to work to preserve the tweets for their digital archives. Worthwhile stuff.

Other people have also been blogging about their conference experience.  Alan Cho put up a post about historians of information that can be found here: http://www.allanslibrary.com/2009/11/asis-and-historians-of-information.html.  If anyone else has blogged the conference, be sure to tag your blog posts with #asist09 for easier retrieval – tagging can be such a great tool!

Although the commute never got any better (today’s parking woes involved a ticket machine that did not dispense tickets … I think I paid thrice…) I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend the conference as a volunteer.  It truly was an amazing experience.

Next conference in Pittsburgh, PA – will you be there?

What a difference a day makes – I brought my power cord with me so I had juice in my laptop and was able to tweet with a frequency that would ordinarily have concerned me – I try not to normally overwhelm my followers – but there was so much information to share and so many mindblowingly insightful tweets to retweet that I am temporarily justified. #asist09

I went to many sessions today and I think I found my favorite (so far) …  Mike Crandell and Karen E. Fisher’s presentation “Free Access to Computers and the Internet at the Public Library”.  From the iSchool (is your school) at UW, they did a fabulous presentation about the research they’ve done (also in book form) and I hope that they develop a model to share with other libraries on how to identify the impacts of PACs (Public Access Computers) in their communities as I feel this would be a good tool to help us evangelize in these tough economic times.  The early finding that they shared with us (on a difficult to read slide – fix please <grin>) were that the top domains of PAC use are social inclusion, education, employment, health & e-government which feels right to me as I observe the patrons in my rural library.  I wish there was more research for public librarians (in general) at this conference …

There was no lunch today …  for a conference of nerds they sure aren’t feeding us.  I had crepes with some fellow attendees including the other student conference blogger (http://crywhite.blogspot.com/) at a wonderful crepe spot on Robson street (turn right).

By the end of the last session today – I was failing at understanding all the new information.  I think I can only absorb so much info in a single day so I left the conference for the day with much fonder memories and a history of tweets I will have to one day turn into a long form blog post, complete with high quality links…

And I also realized that no matter what I do, I always get turned around at skytrain stations and spend many minutes panicking when the parking lot looks completely different and unfamiliar until I realize I need to find the entrance and backtrack from that because the exit always exists you somewhere completely different.  It’s not me, its bad user design.

Cheers,
Ro McKernan

Wow!  That was quite the first day for us at the ASIST 2009 conference.  This was my first time attending and I was given a wonderful opportunity to blog my experiences by the conference organizers (thanks Letisha!).  This year the conference is being held in beautiful Vancouver (can be seen through the raindrops if you squint) and the hotel is conveniently situated right next to the skytrain station.

Us volunteers (around 20 or so?) were given our marching orders then we were set loose to mingle.  I am very amazed at the awesome friendliness displayed by everyone.  Complete strangers, introducing themselves!  I can be shy – so if I look alone please introduce yourself (or if you want to say something on this conference blog – going to try for one post a day… input is always appreciated).

The lunch was entertaining and the plenary session by Tim Bray (@timbray) was very insightful.  Here of the highlights of what I though were some of the more poignant tweets:

@emmalawson: There’s no substitute for human judgement–@timbray

@bezanson: “This community isn’t that concerned about marketing” – Bray. Really? We should be!

@kjersti: Tim Bray: What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet… forever.

@asistpratt: Tim Bray, “The culture of online is epistolary…we are in a golden age of writing…a golden age of archiving and libraries.”

The twittering was fast and furious at times – everybody seems to have adopted the #asist09 hash tag and there is a list of ASIST twitterers compiled here if you want to follow everyone in one fell swoop (let me know if I’ve missed you or if you want off).  Many people were tweeting the individual sessions, its quite educational and informative to search back through the tweets (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23asist09)

Things to note beyond the official program:

Tweet-up
Monday 8p – 10p at Smiley’s Pub, Pender & Hornby http://tinyurl.com/y8t877o (too late at night for me!).

Sig Knit
(saw someone with a sign – can publish time and place …)

That CD in the conference tote – not a coaster – it seems to contain the full text of all the papers at the conference.  Should be good reading material for those times where you’re waiting for the next session.

Posted by: Rowena McKernan (romckernan@gmail.com)

Frits Pannakoek, president of Athabasca University, delivered a keynote for UBC’s Open Access week that was a call to action for librarians. Forty percent of the world’s population is currently in the teenage years, and two hundred thousand potential students among them will be competing for three-quarters as many opportunities in higher education; what, he implored us, is to be done? He admitted that Athabasca’s own initiative was born of financial need – they simply couldn’t afford to maintain journal subscriptions. From Athabasca’s crisis came Pannakoek’s supplication: the “World’s Best First Year.” Librarians, he implored, should take it upon themselves collocate the best possible set of materials for learning a relatively obtuse yet popular subject (i.e., he clarified, calculus), which could then be used by anybody, anywhere. The audience was told confidently that proceeds would still be collected from a need for user support, and from the ever-important need to issue credentials. The imminent need, in Pannakoek’s view, was that librarians make themselves present at the bargaining table, if not for which “we’d have chaos.” The speech, which was jointly televised at UBC Okanagan, was met by applause from librarians and non-librarians alike, and began the conference on a definitively optimistic note.

-Alex Garnett

Today was the debut of a new ongoing series of student led workshops sponsored by the UBC student ASIST organization.  Our innaugral topic, presented by Dan Hooker & Emileigh Kinnear was Managing Citations with Zotero and Word.

About 10 students took time from their busy schedule to attend the workshop which started out with Dan presenting on Zotero.  He showed us some of the available features including how to import and export references and grab references from various web pages automatically.  How to change the default citation style on the fly and other brief features such as adding by ISBN or DOI number and info about an Open Office plugin that is an additional option in citation management.  More documentation available at www.zotero.org

The second half of the workshop focused on Word 2007′s built in citation features.  Navigating the active text and drop down fields she demonstrated how to convert citation styles, manage both in-text and final bibliographies and how to work within the available citation fields.

Handouts were provided and they both remained afterword to answer questions.

Great job guys!!

Note:  Our second workshop will be held Nov. 5th at 12:00.  We will be demo-ing two open source content management systems popular in libraries today (Joomla and Drupal) including a live demo of an active library site.  Hope to see you there!

-Ro McKernan