Library Stuff

Ask a librarian pumpkin
Originally uploaded by OrrinJCL.

If I was into Halloween, I’d totally copy this and put it in front of my home.

Not for his blog, but for his day job at the Lunar and Planetary Institute Library. Great use of a “What’s New” page.

An interesting thought on the use of PowerPoint (PP) in teaching, from Wendy’s Journal:

“I think PowerPoint has become a proxy for talking about the kinds of lectures that are, shall we say content rich. That is not necessarily the best way to teach, and as a tool, powerpoint supports it. But is that saying enough?”

I saw many presenters use PowerPoint this week. Some supported the lecture well, and others didn’t. A colleague mentioned that she is a “visual person” and PP works best for her when she is lecturing (“Different strokes”, I replied). This discussion still interests me and I think that many great lecturers use PP as a crutch for something (nervousness?), which does not benefit the attendees, no matter what their learning styles happen to be.

My presentations from this week are accessible here and were done on third-party wiki software.

I’m in total “libraries and communities” mode after hearing many sessions on the topic at Internet Librarian as well as numerous self-brainstorms (plus, I’m getting ready for my two talks on the subject next month). Today, Michael Stephens posted about the Clio Institute blog, which has “inspiring libraries to inspire communities” as the description tag. Subscribed! I look forward to learning more…

Whoa! TechCrunch has the word (Michael Arrington is the best reporter of new online social tools) on Rija (it’d in pre-alpha – you’ll snicker if you were part of the communities and collaboration track at Internet Librarian), an automatic face recognition photo service helps people gain more perspective about these shots, especially those that are “cataloged” badly. From the Rija site:

“These photos are your stories, your moments and your experiences.The Riya vision is to make it easier for people to tell their stories with their pictures. Our photo search helps you do this. Riya is more than photo search. Our goal is to help you find every photo of yourself on the web. We want to help you recover every moment, every place you’ve been and all of the people you’ve met along the way. We want to give you the tools to discover your future, every place you want to go and meet new friends. We will be successful when we can find every digital photo in the world.”