@hand: mobile technologies in academia + medicine

On April 21st I spent the day at the University of Maryland, Baltimore for "@hand: mobile technologies in academia + medicine", a symposium sponsored by the UMB Health Sciences and Human Services Library. The event began with a Keynote address from healthcare journalist Neil Versel, appropriately titled “Healthcare Here, There, and Everywhere”. The speakers that followed were divided into three sessions; Educational Uses of Mobil Technology, Clinical Uses of Mobile Technology, and Mobile Technology@UMB.

The two presentations in the session Educational Uses of Mobil Technology were most relevant to the non-clinical environment on the Homewood Campus.

“The IM Learning Initiative” at Shenandoah University presented by Dr. Wallace Marsh described their initiative to provide all of their students and faculty with a laptop (MacBook Pro) and iPod/iPhone, to get faculty & students on same platform/equipment. Dr. Marsh provided several examples of the advantages of having everyone using the same equipment; the most interesting one for me occurred this past February during snowmageddon. Even though the University physically closed for several days, the Pharmacy School continued to hold classes using live (Elluminate) and recorded (Camtasia Relay and placed on iTunesU) technologies and remained on schedule for the term. Only the lab courses had to be rescheduled with make-up sessions. This would be a huge advantage to any institution, for any emergency closure. The possibilities of planning for a pandemic immediately came to my mind.

Megan von Isenburg from Duke University Medical Center Library presented “The Kindle: A Novel Way to Increase Access to Information” and taught me a few things I did not know about the Kindle. There are several course related books for students available on the Kindle, and the Kindle is able to search some web-based resources (resource-poor sites). The study provided a Kindle to students and preceptors during a Family Medicine rotation. In an academic setting the Kindle proved to be adequate for providing information, but was identified as intolerable in the clinical setting. Important issues to consider that were addressed: know your audience and know what devices they already own. Is your audience willing and flexible to incorporate new devices into their workflow? Know your content and know what you want your audience to have access to. What materials are available for your specific device? And of course faculty involvement is extremely important. Duke University Medical Center Library plans to use the iPod/iPhone in their next study.

In addition to the presentations, there were also a few exhibitors, most notably Apple providing iPads for attendees to try. Blackboard Mobile was there showing their applications for Blackberry and iPod/iPhone. EBSCOhost Mobile was there showing their application designed especially for the smaller screens of mobile devices. Mobile MedlinePlus was also there showing their consumer focused mobile application from the National Library of Medicine.

The remaining talks are listed below. If you have any questions about this event, please contact me and I will be happy to discuss the sessions with you.


Clinical Uses of Mobile Technology

• Incorporation of handheld computing to a 4 year medical school curriculum
• Mobile MedlinePlus: Health Information On-the-Go
• Mobile for the Millennial Medical Student

Mobile Technology @ UMB

• UMMS Medical Encyclopedia iPhone App: The Journey from Idea to iTunes
• Development of Mobile Applications for the UMB Dental School
• HS/HSL Web App for the iPhone

Integrating Resources cataloging course

During the month of April I took an SCCTP (Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program) online course on "Integrating Resources." What's that? In the past the world of cataloging was divided into monographs and serials, with little in between. Now that we are acquiring more and more electronic resources, which may be frequently updated and which do not remain discrete, but rather have the updates integrated into the whole, a new category was needed: hence, "Integrating Resources." The course covered everything from updating electronic resources, such as databases and Web sites, to the more familiar old-fashioned loose-leaf publications.

This course required several hours a week, with homework assignments. Part of the difficulty of cataloging Integrating Resources is that, by definition, they are continually changing. Another difficulty is that the rules that apply to them are changing as well. In fact, the course did not incorporate the most up-to-date decisions, which was a disappointment; our own in house documentation is more in line with the current cataloging guidelines than some of the course materials. For one class assignment the instructor gave as many as six "correct" answers. Clearly, this kind of cataloging is evolving rapidly, and it takes great effort just to try to keep up with all the changes. I am sharing what I have learned with our staff who are dealing with these materials, and I hope to learn more with hands-on cataloging in the future.

Darlene Townsend
Copy Cataloging Supervisor

14th Off-Campus Library Services Conference 2010

Along with my colleague Jennifer Costaldo (who, I might add, did a great poster presentation) I, too, attended the Off-Campus Library Services Conference in Cleveland at the end of April. I'll try to truncate my usual verbosity to brief points of interest and welcome additional questions or thoughts. ( Ohhh, that audio you hear?? Go down to the bottom of the post and press the 'pause' button on my iPhone...we'll get to that later. ) --- [ UPDATE: (I've removed my electronic iPhone due to it's 'automatic' start function.) Here is a link to the material: LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D55jOkEt6n8 ]

Ok, back to the post-conference brain dump.

The 14th Off-Campus Library Services Conference took place in Cleveland, Ohio from April 27th – 30th , 2010. There were (5) five primary and overarching conceptual foci during the event. 1) Defining variations of the Distance learner; 2) Cloud Computing & movement of institutional repository types of works to 'the cloud'; 3) Service provision in virtual spaces ; 4) Assessment ; 5) Technological sharing platforms and useful integrative software for delivering library services.

My personal interests – 1) Cutting-edge technologies; and 2) Creative integration(s) of technology into service delivery methods – grounded my session selections.

Below, I've provided 'bullet-points' of interesting thoughts, vocabulary, buzz words/phrases, and a few 'light-bulb' moments. (Hopefully there's at least one at every conference you attend.)

* Librarians are being slowly disintermediated (that's right, you heard me...disintermediated. NOTE: This blog space IS somewhat interactive, in that you can post a comment. So, let me know what you think about this --- and anything else that strikes a nerve.)

* Virtual spaces provide access points for the disintermediated librarian

* Immersion via 3D web platforms --- Second Life; Open Cobalt; Open Simulator; Education Grid; Immersive Education Initiative

* Software: Wimba ( much like Adobe Connect - without the massive audio problems )

* Distance students are often unaware of library services. How do we track the elusive students and market our services regularly without becoming a disturbance or distraction.

* Why do distance students like Librarians as a source? --- Quotes from graduate students in the research process: 1) "My librarian is the only one who answers my questions." 2) "Is it me?? Because, I'm not finding anything in my Ebsco searches!"
3) "I can count on you being around more consistently than my professor."

* Real-time interaction is critical to the learning experience and students prefer synchronous as opposed to asynchronous environments

* Virtual office hours tend not to work (hmmm...comments?)

* TERMINOLOGY: Digital Nomads (constantly smartphone connected) Dr. Camila Alire

* BOOK: The Anywhere Library: A Primer for the Mobile Web

* BOOK: The Visible Librarian -- by Judith Seiss

* Craft a message that people can hold onto

* Ensure tutorials and assessment tools can be viewed on mobile devices and make them intuitive. Student comment: "Don't make me figure out what I need to do...please."

* Although some librarian's are still using audio beds underneath PowerPoint presentations, many have graduated to "Jing"-type tools ( watch out for my next blog post on my personal Jing experiences over the past 6 months )

I've also included an overview of the Second Life platform's use in library environments. (that was the pesky audio you heard at the beginning of my post --- "Enter, stage left,... the video in my iPhone below.") UPDATE: (I've removed my electronic iPhone due to it's 'automatic' start function.) Here is a link to the material: LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D55jOkEt6n8

Again, I welcome any questions or response posts.

Off-Campus Library Services (OCLS) Conference

I recently attended the OCLS conference in Cleveland, OH from April 28-30. This conference is offered every two years and focuses on the issues surrounding providing library services and resources to distance education faculty and students. It is a very important conference for many of us over in ELP!

Some notable themes/presentations:

• Discussion on changing the name of the conference from Off-Campus, to something that more accurately reflects what we are doing, such as "online," for example. Location of users is no longer as important as the medium of communication with them.
  
• Embedding library resources and services, as well as librarians, into online course management systems.
• Assessing distance education service delivery- and how to align this to organizational performance.
• Is it a librarian's job to teach writing?
  
• Personal branding- great workshop where we went through a worksheet and tried to create our own personal brands to promote services and reach distant users.
• Seeking library donors among alumni of distance learning programs.
• Library-led online faculty workshops to help with meeting information literacy objectives
  

While I was there, I also presented a poster on a process for embedding library resources into online courses that we created for the Excelsior College Library. You can see a copy of the poster that Anita Norton and I created on the ELP Blog.

Please feel free to ask me any questions. I am happy to share my notes on these sessions!

iLLiad international conference, Virginia Beach

I attended the iLLiad conference in Virginia Beach on April 24, 25, 26 which was hosted by Atlas Systems, Inc. who is developing OCLC iLLIad. We are using it for the interlibrary loan process and document delivery in libraries of JHU. I met couples of iLLiad developers and support staff in this conference. Also I listened or discussed other library issues or their solutions.

March 24, 2010 Preconference

•Topic: Implementation and Navigation of the ILLiad 8 Client

This 3 hour class introduced to the new ILLiad 8 client interface, which utilizes ribbons, tabs and customizable layouts. The class began with a brief overview of the ILLiad 8 client prerequisites and installation process, followed by a discussion of how to navigate the various components of the new ILLiad client interface.

•Topic: More than just a pretty interface - Intermediate ILLiad 8

Delve deeper into the ILLiad 8 client in this class covering the optimizations and new features available. Topics covered include Printing, Customizing Layouts, Staff Manager, and Custom Searching.

March 25, 2010

•Keynote Address, Chip Nilges, Vice President, Business Development at OCLC

Chip Nilges was promoted to Vice President, Business Development, in 2007. He is responsible for OCLC’s content strategy, which includes OCLC’s NetLibrary collections of eBooks and eAudiobooks, as well as the OCLC FirstSearch online reference service and the OCLC Electronic Collections Online service. Chip was formerly Vice President, New Product Planning, and before that was Executive Director, OCLC WorldCat Content and Global Access. He joined OCLC in 1994 and has held several key roles including leadership of FirstSearch, new products and WorldCat content.

•Text Messaging (BAM!) - A quick, low cost way to pump your customer service up a notch
Speaker: Penn State and Notre Dame

Penn State and Notre Dame are offering text messaging service to their patrons now. In the session they provided a demonstration with step-by-step instructions on how patrons received the ILL notices to their cell phones, so that they can be alerted instantly when, for example, an item they have been anxiously awaiting has arrived. In addition they shared practical tips on how to plan the implementation and rollout of the new service and how our patrons have received it. It gave us a new way to server patrons better.

•Topic: Borrowing is a Business: Cultivating a Collection as a Revenue Stream for Academic Libraries
Speaker: Dallas Long, Illinois State University; Michael Walsh, University of Detroit Mercy

Many academic libraries are suffering from tightening budgets during this period of economic uncertainty and are relying on interlibrary loan services more than ever before as they slash serials and collections budgets. This section represented an opportunity for ILL departments to strategically improve their library’s revenue stream. As net lenders, Milner Library at Illinois State University and Kresge Law Library at the University Of Mercy Detroit School of Law experienced increases in lending fees. The presenters recognized that the increases were a result of multiple borrowing requests for specific holdings. They analyzed their collections for other heavily requested items, removed barriers for lending such items, and recommended the strategic purchases of journals with few available holdings in OCLC. The presenters shared their experiences identifying possible serial holdings and monographs, creating a business plan for strategic purchases of new titles, copyright considerations and negotiations with licensing, and evaluation of lending fees.

•Topic: Destination Resource Sharing Community Portal (Webjunction): Where do we go from here?
Speaker: John Trares, OCLC

The section guided us how to use iLLiad community portal, which is using WebJunction functionality, this community portal provides the ability to connect with other librarians who have similar interests and experiences. We are able to start or participate in discussions about resource sharing topics, share best practices, or discuss new trends. And with MyWebJunction, we can stay up-to-date with discussions you are involved in and see what your friends are doing. Learn how to use more of the features and provide feedback on what needs to be added to the portal to help improve it.

•Medical Library Round Table
Speaker: Genie Powell, Atlas Systems

Open discussion about current issues facing medical libraries using ILLiad.

March 26, 2010

•OCLC Update

https://www.atlas-sys.com/conference/2010Presentations/ILLiad_OCLC_Update.pdf

•Social Networking and ILLiad
Speaker: Stephanie Spires, Atlas Systems

Blogs, Facebook, iTunes U, Twitter, YouTube, Meebo, Flickr, & delicious are the most popular social networking/online tools in use at ILLiad libraries. This session gave me a brief overview of the tool and ideas for how it might be integrated with your ILLiad workflows and web.

•Atlas Update

Preview some new features of next release.


By Changxin Chen

Computers In Libraries Conference April 12-14th

I recently attended a three conference of Computers in Libraries in Alexandria, VA from April 12-14 2010. I thoroughly enjoyed this well attended conference of over 1000 people from all over the world, mainly the U.S. and Canada. Most of the talks I attended were from the Information Literacy track in addition to all of the keynote speakers. Some main themes included; the need to adopt and adapt to technology, simplify, community sharing, remixing and creation is important. Please feel free to email me if you're interested in my 11+ page document of full notes from the talks rhall@jhu.edu or join us in ELP on Wed May 12th from 12-1 for a brown bag lunch where I'll share my experience in person and will share main ideas learned. Overall, I had a wonderful experience in the talks and met some great people. I highly recommend this conference to anyone who is interested!

Related links: http://www.libconf.com/cil2010-resources/cil2020-on-slideshare-net/ and http://www.libconf.com

Regards,

Renee Hall, Distance Education Librarian

Spring CNI Membership Meeting, Baltimore

I attended the Spring Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Membership Meeting here in Baltimore on April 12 and 13. On April 13 David Reynolds and I gave a presentation, "Curating Published Data", about our DataPub project. It went swimmingly.

Luckily, presenters get to stay for the whole conference, so I did, and I had the pleasure of attending some really worthwhile presentations. I've included my notes below, for what they're worth -- I take skimpy, keyword-based notes: "Hey, they said the word 'interoperable' again!". They are valuable to me as aide-mémoires.

I'd say the main themes of the conference were "interoperability" and "data". The highlights for me included:

1. Hearing Clifford Lynch speak. When he speaks, everyone should stop and listen. It has long been my feeling that if you want to locate the one guy who knows exactly what's going on this very minute at the intersection of the library world and the academic computing world, you've found him in Cliff Lynch.

2. Learning about Indiana University's collaboration with Canada's Public Knowledge Project, Rice's Connexions project, and Duraspace to link together the PKPs Open Journal System publishing system with the Connexions learning object management system with Duraspace's cloud-based repository service.

3. Learning about MIT's Simile software for data visualization and how our colleagues and co-presenters from the Netherlands are using it to create "enhanced" publications. Specifically, they are using various Simile widgets to enhance the Journal of Archaeology of the Low-Lands, using it for GIS visualization, sortable data grids, etc. (As a side note, did you know?: All government-sponsored researchers in the Netherlands are required to submit their datasets to a central repository. I did not know that. Interesting...)

4. Learning more about George Mason's Omeka software, hearing about Columbia's use of it, pushing Web publication of exhibits out from the Tech staff to the Curatorial staff, and how they've gone from 1.5 online exhibitions a year to 13 using this software. We should look into this here. I've already installed Omeka on my workstation. I look forward to the release of various useful Omeka plugins by Columbia and UVa, most notably a plugin allowing persistent storage for Omeka to point to objects in a Fedora repository.

5. I was interested to learn that UVa employs two full-time GIS trainers for their popular "GIS and the Humanities" track. This is a short course I would like to take.

6. I was interested to learn that the Connexions software has the facility for creating a monograph, complete with table of contents, pagination, orphan/widow control, typography, page layout, indexes, etc. Very impressive. Something to look into and compare with PKP's upcoming Open Monograph Press.

Overall, the CNI conference was a worthwhile day and a half. And did I mention, the Marriott Waterfront overlooking Pier Six and Baltimore's Inner Harbor is a wonderful place for a conference, and lunch on Tuesday was fantastic?!

Mark Cyzyk

MY NOTES:

Plenary
Harvard, MIT, NCAR
KU's (Kansas) experience with Open Access, repositories, etc.
Cliff's query about the position of society publishers. Prospects of disciplinary IRs.
MIT making progress with those publishers who "pass the IQ test"


UVa's Scholar's Lab
Gateway, showcase, find way through services, support for teaching and technology
History of setting up this Ed-Tech group at UVa
Library as lab for humanities research
Electronic centers
Literally, a history of ed-tech at UVa, including buildings, moves, renovations, architects
Budget lines, accountability, intraorganizational, er, organization
Essentially describing CIAT at Towson, CER at Hopkins
Physical space, like BLC
History of staffing
Skunkworks. Incubator projects
NEH grants
Spatial and location-based digital humanities
Omeka plugins, Blacklight
NEH grant for GIS and the Humanities
321 classes in the past month
GIS training is booming
Two full time GIS specialists in the Scholar's Lab
"GIS for Humanists" course

Our presentation. Netherlands. Narsis. Simile from MIT data visualization software

Big Digital Machine
Indiana. Collaboration between Duraspace, PKP/OJS, Connexions. Integration
A fabric of technologies. Provide durability layer
DSpace as frontend, Fedora as deep archive, DuraCloud for storage
OJS use of SWORD
Connexions "lenses" [views]. Selective archiving of content
Islandora mentioned on one slide
Overview of Connexions. Instructional modules. Collections of modules
Learning objects. "Lenses" as an endorsement, imprimatur
Book publishing with Connexions. Table of contents. Pagination. Page layout. Orphan/widow control.
Lightweight branding/full branding
Enterprise Rhaptos -- standalone version of Connexions
Connexions Consortium
OJS/Connexions integration
OJS admin can add OJS journal to Connexions via SWORD


Turning Curators into Web Publishers at Columbia
Exhibitions, gallery services
Omeka plugins
Online versions of physical exhibitions
Online-only thematic galleries
Less mediation by technology staff
Empower curators to become Web publishers
Aquifer MODS format
Fedora for centralized digital asset management
Multiple tracks relative to the difficulty of the exhibition
1. Digital project track for complex projects
project proposal to AULs. AULs signoff
2. Brick and Mortar plus digital component
Curators choose from preexisting templates to support physical exhibition
Exhibition Support Tool plus Omeka
Online exhibition planning form, protocol for planning and implementation of the exhibition
3. Brick and Mortar only
Exhibition Support Tool used here too
4. Online Gallery track
short term, streamlined planning, limited metadata, adequately served by Omeka
Digitization workflow
Omeka Rich Internet Application features
Omeka Dublin Core
But not MODS compliant
Local storage only, out of the box
No workflow or physical exhibition support
BUT
ESTO Exhibition Support Tool
Omeka MODS plugin forthcoming
Columbia has produced 13 exhibits in the past year with this! quick and efficient
UVa Fedora to Omeka plugin. Fedora as backend to Omeka frontend
UVa EAD to Omeka plugin (import), Solr search plugin

Closing Plenary
Codes, Clouds and Constellations: Open Science in the Data Decade
Liz Lyon: UKoln, University of Bath
"Open Science Report" commissioned by JISC, last November
Scaling to share
Cloud computing, Amazon elastic cloud services, Prosper software for genome sequencing
Genome scale biology. Genome data as a commodity
Need for data sharing
Need for data attribution. Data citation
The curation gap
Tapping into citizen science
How are our institutions responding to all of this?
High throughput biology. Mentioned Johns Hopkins' center
Research triangle cloud computing project
Need for data informatics in Information Schools
Illinois, course in data curation