Ocean state librarian - Research Link of the Week Archive

Each week, OCEANSTATELIBRARIAN.COM endeavours to find and explore a new resource that can make the online interactive experience a richer intellectual endeavour. Those links will be archived here and on the OSL Blog.

Intel InfoScape Double HD Touchscreen Internet Experience

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - January 2010

Intel Touchscreen - Gigantic Double HD interactive touchscreen from the CES Expo in Las Vegas:

This video was shot in Las Vegas

What are the applications for this touchscreen in library information settings? Could this be the future of reference and bibliographic services - representing 500 cubes or more of simultaneous information sources? How could this be used to instruct in real and virtual collection development in GSLIS settings? With so many information screens shrinking down to phone size - what sort of real world advantage is there for this application?.

GoPro Hero in HD

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - December 2009

GoPRO Hero in HD - is the next step in point of view, wearable and mountable camera and provides a truly immersive on-line experience:

GoPro HD HERO Camera: Base Jump Movie from GoPro on Vimeo.

Click the multi-arrow icon to the left of vimeo to go full-screen.
This remarkable footage was shot in Norway.

The proliferation of broadband along with high definition televisions make truly immersive on-line experiences possible. Imagine the possibilities and applications for job following and providing directions. Is there confusion about the method to check out library materials, parking configuration, or directions to your library drive-through? Imagine how this can create a new reality in conjunction with interactive gaming and how you can enrich the on-line experience for your patrons.

Three Dimensional Imaging - with Gigapan

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - October 15, 2009

Gigapan - a collaboration of NASA Ames Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University, and Google - provides an immersive on-line experience:

40 Steps on Cliffwalk in Narragansett Bay
Click the arrow to load the panoramic image, then FULLSCREEN. This series includes image links at the bottom of FULLSCREEN for some of Rhode Island's most beautiful and historic vistas.

Using a simple, relatively inexpensive - $299 robot - a vast array of off the shelf digital cameras and software that stiches the photos together, you can create an experience of being there. Visit the 360 degree icons within Google Earth and to see how this product works and envision a remote sphere of reality.

Total Recall - with Gordon Bell

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - October 1, 2009

Gordon Bell co-author of Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything discusses the MyLifeBits project:

This timely presentation explores a process to record what we sense, how we interpret what we sense, and what we imagine. How does this change the concept of autobiography? Can we really keep everything and store a lifetime? What are the software solutions? Gordon Bell is the laboratory.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - July 4, 2009

How Twitter can make History - with Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky author of Here Comes Everybody discusses how social media has changed the political landscape:

This timely presentation looks a how to effectively use social media - Facebook, Twitter and other tools to convene and convey a message with a pattern of 'many to many'. The message of this brilliant lecture is the tradition of one-way authoritative delivery of information is becoming extinct.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - May 18, 2009

Show me the money! Using GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop

GIMP from SourceForge provides an excellent alternative to Photoshop:

Show me the money!

Adobe Photoshop is an excellent graphics tool and its integration with Dreamweaver is superb. However, many libraries may not need all of the bells and whistles that come with that program. GIMP provides a great alternative. With a single user license for Photoshop Elements running at $139.99 and the full version of Photoshop at $699 the GIMP open source alternative could be just what you need to facilitate your graphics. If you have experience with Photoshop, the learning curve should be relatively low.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - May 6, 2009

Eat, Pray, Love : Reinforcing Genius and Creativity with Elizabeth Gilbert

Author of Eat Pray Love Elizabeth Gilbert presents this engaging, inspirational talk at TED .

Librarians are stewards of the collective genius of civilizations. Give yourself the time to view this presentation to help understand the process of genius and creativity. Learn from her and give yourself the time to help you understand the puzzle of your life!

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - April 27, 2009

Content is King! Use these content managers to crown your websites!

On the web, content is king. With increasingly sophisticated expectations for Library websites, site management becomes increasingly expensive and inefficient. By utilizing these open source tools - Drupal for Unix based servers or DotNetNuke for Windows based servers, you extend the social networking capabilities of your libraries, create an exceptional user experience and save money by utilizing open source, rather than expensive - multi- workstation design tool licenses.

Both content management tools offer e-commerce capabilities (sell your bookbags!), blog and wiki functionality, and many user contributed modules with calenders, scheduling, sophisticated user access controls, graphics, forums, and surveys.

There are few feature-rich Open Source content managers outside of DotNetNuke for Windows servers and the documentation for DotNetNuke is somewhat unweildy compared to Drupal. However, there are several multi-featured and module rich Open Source content managers in addition to Drupal available for Unix based servers worthy of review including:

Geeklog ~ Joomla ~ Mambo ~ Owl ~ PostNuke ~ Typo3 ~ Xoops ~ B2evolution - (blog software) ~ Wordpress - (blog software)

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - April 20, 2009

The Thing : Social Networking at its best!

Tim Spalding's LibraryThing is a brilliant evolution of social networking. From the most basic cataloging component to intuitive recommendations and organization building, this network is a reader's paradise. Drawing from Library of Congress and Amazon.com records building your own library and sharing it with others is simple, straightforward, and enjoyable. Librarians can join regional groups and leverage the social network to facilitate book clubs and discussion groups.

A great marketing tool for your library!

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - March 15, 2009

The MIT Media Labs : Finger Painting with Pixels and the Sixth Sense

Remember finger painting? It was a simple, fluid artistic medium that was fun, messy and dynamic. What if you had a new, colorful, dynamic process that melds the childlike simplicity of drawing with your hand to extract information from the digital world? MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group with Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry show how the next step of digital interaction steps back into intuitive hand movements and into the future accessing everything the digital space has to offer.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - March 2, 2009

A Tale of Two Catalogs: For Profit v Taxes (and Tuition Driven Investments)

Public and Academic libraries compete physically and virtually with commercial information vendors. Inventions such as Kindle and Sony Digital Reader promise to offer viable alternatives to the physical book. How do on-line library catalogs stack up against commercial catalogs such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google's gigantic digital repository? What should you be asking of your proprietary vendors to make sure your catalog is competitive?

Consider:

Commercial

Indirect Commercial

OCLC Simple Book Search ∞ OCLC Advanced Book Search OCLC WorldCat
Google Simple Book Search ∞ Google Book Search Avanced

Proprietary Academic

Stanford University Simple Book Search ∞ Stanford Advanced Book Search Socrates Sirsi
Brown University Simple Book Search ∞ Brown Advanced Book Search Josiah III

Proprietary Public Consortium

What if your library revenue depended on how well your catalog works? What if your tax based or tuition based appropriation was based entirely on customer satisfaction? What if failure to adapt to the market demand for materials made your library close down? That is what commercial vendors face if their catalogs do not meet consumer needs. Their income is entirely based on customer satisfaction.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - February 22, 2009

The Google APIs Ajax Playground: Manipulating Space and Time

Learn how to use the free API code from Google on your websites and blogs to manipulate and control space and time.

These latest offerings from Google include easy to modify AJAX files that you can use on blogs and websites to create interactive calendars, enable animated circulation charts, show budget trends, and even fly in through Google Earth to your library location or the remote site of a special event. These tools from Google allow you to develop your web pages without utilizing complex CGI, ASP, or PHP scripting to interact with databases. By adding Google's tools, your patrons will have more control over their experience with your website or blog.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link(s) of the Week - February 15, 2009

Kiva.org and DonorsChoose.org: Understanding how to Help

Learn about innovative ways of giving and lending to support communities and education around the world.

Find out how you can contribute locally, nationally and internationally to help educate students and provide the resources for entrepreneurs to help themselves. Find out how you can direct your patrons to become part of the solution or get help for their own worthy projects. DonorsChoose.org provides direct aide to worthy educational projects in the US - classroom by classroom. Kiva.Org lets you lend to entrepreneurs around the world who are trying to make a difference in their communities.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - February 8, 2009

University of Nottingham: Understanding the Elements

Martyn Poliakoff CBE FRS, of The Clean Technology Group stars in this humorous and enlightening look at the nature of elements.

Martyn Poliakoff, Pete Licence, Stephen Liddle, Debbie Kays, Neil Barnes and website creator Brady Haran from the University of Nottingham give us a fresh look at chemistry and what can be done with YouTube to facilitate higher learning.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - February 1, 2009

Scott McCloud: Understanding comics

Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics explains how comic books work.

This exceptional presentation includes references to an Infinite Canvas. Microsoft Live Labs allows you to create your own infinite canvas. Using the techniques outlined you can consider how to preserve spatial relationships by creating temporal maps.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - January 25, 2009

Library v Tardis - Using 2.0 technology to facilitate research

TARDIS:

'A product of Time Lord technology, a properly maintained and piloted TARDIS can transport its occupants to any point in time and space.' (Wikipedia)

Library:

'A product of MLS technology, a properly maintained and directed Library can transport its occupants to any point in time and space.' (Revised)

The speed, scope and accuracy of transport is facilitated by Library 2.0 technology and everything before and after - papyrus to Pentium. Librarians create navigation points in time and space via indexing and abstracting, cataloging, and organization.

Here is a tool that will let your indexing and abstracting ability shine in 2.0 and beyond:

SourceForge.net provides free download of the Open Source directory tool - Yet Another Link Directory (YALD). The PHP based program works with Windows or Linux and MySQL. You can build a directory on the scale of the Yellow Pages or the Librarians Index to the Internet. By allowing librarian evaluated submissions to build on-line resources, you can create extraordinary authoritative local information resources.

http://www.yaldirectory.com/download.php

YALD is easy to install and requires minimal maintenance. All you need to do is follow the simple instructions, set it up on your website host, modify the CSS style and create an on-line directory. YALD or more advanced content management solutions such as JOOMLA, allow librarians to use their indexing and abstracting skills to create locally accessible collections based on accuracy, authority, currency, and content.

Ocean State Librarian Research Link of the Week - January 18, 2009

Photosynth : Checkerboard Buddha on the Rocks

On January 20, 2009 CNN IReporters collaborated at the inaguration of Barack Obama to create a first of its kind immersive experience. They will use the new software from Microsofts Live Labs - Photosynth - to create a 3D panorama at the moment Barack Obama is sworn in to become our 44th President. Photosynth shows great promise in creating an unique user experience.

Checkerboard Buddha on the Rocks was Photosynthed from 103 images with a Canon ELPH. Use the expand view to go to full-screen.

Immerse yourself in the Checkboard Buddha field by pressing the character P on your keyboard and finding your inner doughnut.
In order to view, you must be using Windows XP or Vista and download the browser plug-in.