LITS Labs

Screenshots of Musicovery

1. Dark/Calm axis
2. Positive/Energetic Axis

3. Dark/Energetic Axis

4. Positive/Calm Axis

5. Red Portishead

6. Green Donna Summer

The Technology Advisory Committee of the UL would like to know if you would be interested in the committee hosting a half-day (or a few hours) “summit” where people could share and brainstorm short- and long-term ideas in a “big picture” way about:

• Improvements to current technology-based services, programs, etc.
• Specific and general technology training needs related to our work.
• Trends in technology for libraries — what kinds of technology do we see becoming relevant in our context, and how do we prepare for those?

This would allow LITS and the other committee members to be responsive to gaps in current training, platforms, and services, as well as prioritize and plan for the future. To make this successful, we need more information from you. Please fill out the following survey (it is only 6 questions and is anonymous):

Kate found this — a Six Revisions post listing 30 websites to follow if you are into web development.

Woon Tang, Jared Contrascere, and James Buettner won the 2007-2008 Outstanding Student Employee of the Year award for student teams working on campus, beating out very stiff competition from two other library departments, a variety of dining services teams, an emergency response team from one of the dorms, who have to put out grease fires and stuff, among others — 16 nominations in all.

On the (virtual) menu — you’re supposed to bring your own crumpets and butter:

reAssess — tutorial software that James and Woon developed. It’s described elsewhere on the blog, but here is the demo tutorial, as well as the hosted software download on google code. It is currently in use in the UL for the English 112 tutorial/tour, an IPC pre- and post assessment of library instruction (offline at the moment), and an ATE tutorial (under development). As of March 19th, 1720 students had taken the English 112 tutorial-quiz. That’s 1720 answer sheets that the IDAs of LTL *didn’t* have to grade this semester.

Short demonstration of the OhioLINK Digital Resource Center development environment for digital projects — we have content that we are contributing.

*NEW* Libguides at BGSU — we just bought it for class web pages, research guides, and any other guide-type things that you can think of. It’s great, very easy, Web 2.0 capable, easy to embed videos, rss feeds, quicksearch boxes, Meebo boxes, etc.

Screencasts and the Captivate audio/video multimedia station — see some short demos that we have created with the Captivate software for training/demos. See a “how to create a PIN for My Library Account” screencast demo, and a “Sending messages in Microsoft Outlook” screencast that I and Rudy respectively created in less than a couple of hours. Rudy’s other Microsoft Outlook screencasts: Checking Messages, Creating Folders, Attaching files to email messages. IMPORTANT: These are demos to show you what is possible for your instruction, demonstration, and training needs, both internally and externally. These are not, and may never be, final production products. You need speakers or headphones to listen to these.

Gadget Petting Zoo: the eeePCs, our 2.2 pound laptops for stacks work or other mobile processing needs; the new digital video camera.

Ning: create your own open or closed social network (i.e., your own private Facebook) with commenting, blogging, forum/discussion capabilities.  At the moment, it’s closed to those who aren’t invited, so if you want a demo of the LITS labs Ning network, you’ve got to come to the demo.

HueTunes — Susannah, Jared and Gwen have a working prototype research project for next Generation, Web 3.0 catalogs involving non-textual social tagging for non-textual objects (not necessarily ours — this is basic, not applied, research at the moment). It plays music — you need either speakers or headphones to participate.

*New* CanonScan LiDE 25 very light, PORTABLE, small scanner — USB powered, $50.00 (yeah — $50) –suitable for either portability needs or simple, low-volume b&w needs. This thing is SLOW. But it’s simple, cheap and did I say portable? USB powered, so it can run off a laptop running on a battery for a couple of hours. (No, can’t run it off the eeePC, it’s the first thing we tried).

Sample scan 1

Book cover sample scan

Sample Scan 2 (which one is me? this is not a trick question)

Gwen and Elan

Make me a Donate to the Library app that’s this powerful. What Noise?

LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION? Communication Arts is always worth a look for cutting edge design.

Here are the links to favorite websites/library catalogs that the Public Interfaces Committee is giving James Martin, our graphic designer, to help him design the graphic elements to the catalog. Other input is welcome — staff, faculty, students can email Gwen. The only requirement is that you give the rationale for why you like it — color scheme, playful elements, font choice, etc.

Kent - http://kentlink.kent.edu

-Not sure how I feel about the tab w/in a tab, but I do like the “numbers” and “reserves” tabs. Plus, aside from the first keyword search page with all the search tips, their pages look clean. Nothing extraneous, simple nav.Marietta -

http://mclib.marietta.edu
-Their tabs stink because they don’t behave like tabs, but I do like the “other searches” tab with options listed. And too,they’re the McLib.

WCDPL - http://www.wcdpl.lib.oh.us
-Dislike the website, but once you’re in the catalog, I really like the bar within the tabs. This makes a lot of sense to me, and groups your search items beautifully. Like the advanced and basic searches under the same umbrella. I like this. [Comment: I can’t even FIND their catalog on the website!. Where is it?]

Dartmouth - http://libcat.dartmouth.edu
-Simple, simple, simple. Nothing to clutter the main page. Search tips on subsequent pages are noninvasive; I don’t feel as if they’re leading me astray or confusing me. The whole thing looks very clean.
http://www.amateurgourmet.com/ (Despite its busy-ness, I have alwaysloved this website. The banner at the top changes to reflect holidays, moods, whatever, and I love the bar immediately below it that nicely categorizes all his blog posts. Content is in the center, and there are lots of ads on the left and right, but they don’t detract — or distract — from what’s front and center. Plus, it’s fun, and I imagine his tone throughout his posts has more than a little to do with why I like it.)

http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/ (Love the circle-o’-options, though I wish each of them had a little mouseover helping clue. I don’t always remember what’s in the meat wagon vs the meat locker, though a bit of thoughtfulness usually helps me out.)

http://www.half.ebay.com/ (One thing about their main page always grabs my attention: the textbooks tab. It’s fun and functional. The rest of the page is a tad too busy, but I love that little tab.)

http://www.zingermans.com/ (Of course. The typeface is great and I love the left side nav. that appears on damn near every page. And the less important news or “read all about it” is on the right, so users can skip right over it. I like the colors, the fun graphics, and I ALWAYS want to poke around and try to find something to buy, even though I never do because I can drive there. But the fact that I want to explore and stay on the site says a lot about its design, I think.)

http://www.flickr.com/ (Their main page is so basic, but it works so well. Search, Create, Share, Upload, Make, Explore…all these are strong action verbs and (stretching a bit?) give power to the user. They’ve included all the high points and I like that the image changes every time the page loads.)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2038/2304064020_11310fdfe3_b.jpg (And this says it pretty well, too.)

TopCat catalog: http://topcat.switchinc.org/
Clean, uncluttered, good unobtrusive color, very minimalist yet striking logo/header

National Palace Museum of Taiwan: http://www.npm.gov.tw/index.html
I love this site. It manages to combine high culture and a sense of imagination, discovery, and sheer visual weirdness. Click on the Adventures in the NPM, or check their downloads! http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/downloads.htm especially their desktop art or their totally KA short movies. I find it particularly interesting because, like any research library, they are dealing with both high art scholarly objects, recent productions in contemporary art (especially their digital and film projects), scholarly researchers and the inquiring public.

McSweeney’s http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
I love B&W — especially with one red dot on the page. Plaintext.org

Worldcat http://www.worldcat.org/
Clean, uncluttered, contemporary, nice use of color, especially gray.

Ditto the NYPL Digital Gallery: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

Georges Seurat at MOMA http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2007/seurat/: subtle, subtle, subtle. I like the no-color color, and the way the text in “Georges Seurat” in the heading changes color.

I like the idea of retro-ism — I think it could work very well for our context
http://www.sottocostoska.it/home.asp

Another one — playful design, encouragement of interaction with the user. Make sure you click through all the various links. http://www.haldiram.com

Etsy at http://www.etsy.com/. Sadly, they changed the absolutely fabulous color search that was the inspiration for our own HueTunes, but I still love Etsy because of the way it manages to combine a clean, uncluttered look with the aesthetics of the handmade.

The colors, especially that lavender against the brown and gray. Recchuiti Confections http://www.recchiuti.com/ I like the header too, the way the background and foreground work together. And I like the way they handle horizontal tabs deeper into the site.

Testing another web 2.0 social application for possible use in instruction, in-house communicaton, staff professional development, whatever…LITS labs social network site.

It’s by invitation only right now, as I’m testing privacy settings. I’ve invited a select few to join me, most of whom already have. If you want an invite, let me know. I’ll open it up as soon as I customize it a little more.

Or make your own, or join someone else’s like Library 2.0, Classroom 2.0, or Planet Pugspeak. Note to archivists: there are a lot of “for the descendents of” ning-based social networks out there. A possible tool for the BGSU Anniversary or the Genealogy users? Or a social network for the users of the HCGL?