In For a Penny, In For a Pound… My Promotion “Case for Support”
JUst before going away on holiday, I popped up a questionnaire asking for a little help working out what sort of impact – if any – I had on folk that could weave in to my promotion case for support… Thanks to all who took the time out to reply (it was very humbling:-)
Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s a draft of the Case for Support, which I need to submit tomorrow. Whilst I haven’t been able to add direct quotes from the questionnaire responses – the word limit is set at 1500 words – your responses did inform what I wrote: some of the words are very heavily loaded and more...
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OUseful Info - August 26, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Admin... Anything you want promotion case
Doodlings Around the Data Driven Journalism Round Table Event Hashtag Community
…got that?;-) Or in other words, this is a post looking at some visualisations of the #ddj hashtag community…
A couple of days ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a Data Driven Journalism round table (sort of!) event organised by the European Journalism Centre. I’ll try to post some notes on it, err, sometime; but for now, here’s a quick collection of some of the various things I’ve tinkered with around hashtag communities, using #ddj as an example, as a “note to self” that I really should pull these together somehow, or at least automate some of the bits of workflow; I also nee...
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OUseful Info - August 25, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Tinkering Visualisation datajourn ddj
Idle Thoughts – A Few More Approaches to Making CSV Files Queryable
How much more useful would CSV data be if it was queryable?
In a previous post (Using CSV Docs As a Database) I described a recipe for importing a CSV file into a Google spreadsheet so that the data it contained could be queried using the Google visualisation API. Whilst there isn’t a lot of technical knowledge required to republish the data in this way, there is still the overhead of requiring the user to log in to a Google account, create a spreadsheet, import the CSV document and then discover the spreadsheet URL. And bearing in mind the rule of thumb that two clicks is at least one click too many, this route to ...
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OUseful Info - August 17, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Tinkering csv database
Approaches to Soliciting Opinions for Institutional Responses to Formal Consultations
One of the things we didn’t put into the original JISCPress bid – though in hindsight we might have – was a use case for commentable documents in the context of government consultations soliciting formal responses from higher education institutions (for example, Universities UK: Review of External Examining Arrangements in the UK).
From a chat with Alison Nash in the OU’s recently reorganised Strategy Unit (I think?), it seems that candidate consultations are fielded by a member of that unit who then emails likely suspects (identified quite how, I’m not sure?) with either a link to, or copy of...
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OUseful Info - August 11, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: WriteToReply JISCPress
Yahoo Pipes and Spectrum Software
As mention previously, I've been reading about gaming, and have a fond memory of my ZX Spectrum years. On top of this I wanted to combine it with my trying to learn yahoo pipes, especially after reading Information twist result on 'this made me' project, using pipes.Therefore, I've presently used nearly all his code trying to make one for Spectrum Games companies, and use a map to show where they are. Results can be seen here (its early days yet).What I wish to do, is then have another map showing each companies games, and perhaps use world cat to indicate if these companies have been tagged etc.Thanks to Gary for the twitter assistance to..
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librarytwopointzero - August 4, 2010 Author: library2.0
Productiever worden door sociale media
Je leest dagelijks tientallen berichten over de kracht van sociale media. Meestal zijn dat holle herhalingen. How Social Media Can Make Us More Productive is misschien ook een herhaling, maar zeker geen holle. Het artikel legt kort en helder uit waarom kenniswerkers zoveel baat kunnen hebben bij al die hulpmiddelen.
Information overload isn’t a new problem, and some folks would argue that Twitter and other tools have only made information overload more of a problem. But the truth is that if you carefully use tools like Twitter, yahoo pipes, RSS readers, Google Alerts and bookmarking to discover content that’s...
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Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek - July 29, 2010 Tags: real-time web kenniswerkers informatieprofessionals sociale media
Library mashups
Mashups zijn webapplicaties die de inhoud van twee of meer bronnen samenbrengen tot één nieuwe, originele toepassing. Slim gebruikt kunnen ze bibliotheekwebsites en -catalogi meer dynamiek, een grotere zichtbaarheid en betere functionaliteit geven. Populaire mashups maken gebruik van kaarten – denk aan Google Maps – of remixen foto’s, video’s, RSS feeds, enz.
In Library mashups laat Nicole C. Engard een schare gerenommeerde early adopters aan het woord. Jenny Levine, Darlene Fichter, Tim Spalding, John Blyberg, Karen A. Coombs, Joshua Ferraro en vele anderen implementeerden voor hun bibliotheken ...
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Commissaresse 2.0 - July 28, 2010 Author: de Commissaresse Tags: bronnenonderzoek
Libraries Near Me Map (Courtesy of LibraryThing)
Given your location as postcode, where can you find a list of libraries near you? As with many of these public information style questions, it can be quite hard trying to find a single general answer. A crude way is to enter a search map along the lines of libraries near POSTCODE into Google Maps, but the results that are returned aren’t necessarily that good… Alternatively, you can go to your local council website, and then do a search there for libraries; but the format in which results are provided can vary; and if you’re a developer, there’s no immediately obvious way of creating (or consuming)...
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OUseful Info - July 27, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Pipework Tinkering libraries LibraryThing LibraryThing local
5 Minute Hack – UK Centres Online Map
So…
…earlier today…
Note the time: 11.20
A few minutes later, I posted this:
Again, note the time: 11.26
So what happened in between..?
1) I clicked through on Chris’ tweet to get to A little thing to help UK Online/Rewired State hackday / Jul 23rd 2010,
2) copied a link from there (http://ukonline-fakeapi.appspot.com/?postcode=ec1a4dd) to a JSON feed for list of UKOnline centres in the vicinity of a postcode that was the little thing @jaggeree wrote to help the UK Online/Rewired State hackday on August 7th.
3) Went to yahoo pipes, created a new pipe, grabbed:
- a Fetch Data block that can parse a...
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OUseful Info - July 23, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Pipework Tinkering RSGetO Rewired State UK Online Centres hackday
Previewing the Contents of a JSON Feed in Yahoo Pipes
This post builds on the previous one (Grabbing the Output of a yahoo Pipe into a Web Page) by describing a strategy that can help you explore the structure of a JSON feed that you may be pulling in to a web page so that you can identify how to address the separate elements contained within it.
This strategy is not so much for developers as for folk who don’t really get coding, and don’t want to install developer tools into their browser.
As the “Grabbing the Output of a yahoo Pipe into a Web Page” post described, it’s easy enough to use JQuery to get a JSON feed into a web page, but what happe...
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OUseful Info - July 19, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Pipework json debugging
Grabbing the Output of a Yahoo Pipe into a Web Page Using JQuery
One of the things I tend to take for granted about using yahoo pipes is how to actaully grab the output of a yahoo Pipe into a webpage. Here’s a simple recipe using the JQuery Javascript framework to do just that.
The example demonstrates how to add a bit of code to a web page that will load in the contents of an RSS feed from a specified and arbitrary URL using yahoo pipes.
Loading RSS directly into a page from an arbitrary website as an XML file is typically not possible if the RSS feed is hosted on a web domain that is different to the domain of the page the feed is to be loaded in to because of the security model...
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OUseful Info - July 19, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Tinkering jquery
RSS for library jobs
(Found via here). Whilst reading this blog post I discovered the LIS New Professionals Network. In this new resource I discovered an excellent yahoo pipes device that searches for Library jobs in the UK.
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librarytwopointzero - July 12, 2010 Author: library2.0
Using WriteToReply to Publish Committee Papers. Is an Active Role for WTR in Meetings Also Possible?
Last night I spent an hour or two putting the various papers released so far by the Public Sector Transparency Board on WriteToReply, an unofficial act but one that seems to have met with approval:
The majority of documents we’ve published on WriteToReply previously tend to be large, standalone documents, albeit with multiple sections that we tend to map on to separate blog posts. Recently, I’ve also started exploring how it feels to post “single page” consultations within a more general blog setting (e.g. Single Page Commentable Consultation Docs).
The PSTB site is a different matter, however, bec...
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OUseful Info - July 7, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Search WriteToReply
NARCIS - National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System
In a recent email it was explained that NARCIS, National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System now offers RSS-feeds for search results, or even a widget you can embed in your website or blog
I think it is interesting to keep up what is entered into NARCIS by or about the UMCG.
So the search "universitair medisch centrum groningen" OR UMCG", gave me 101 results divided in 6 tab-results
Every set of results can be saved as RSS feed, embedded or added to your Favourites, EXCEPT the "ALL Sources".
I tried to merge these 5 rss-feeds into one via pipes.yahoo.com and it seemed to work.
You can see t...
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DigiCMB - July 5, 2010 Author: Guus van den Brekel
New Resource: Digital Journalist Survival Guide: A Glossary of Tech Terms You Should Know
Like we say very often on ResourceShelf, don’t let the title keep you from using this resource if you’re not a journalist. This glossary will be an excellent tool for a variety of users including educators, students, and even info pros. It was compiled and written by Jennifer 8. Lee and made available online by the Poynter Institute.
A Glossary of Tech Terms
It begins with Application Programming Interface, includes HTML5 (a very popular term these days), and concludes with yahoo! pipes.
This glossary could also bridge the lines of communications between systems librarians and techie/geek types to non-tech in...
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ResourceShelf - June 28, 2010 Author: resourceshelf Tags: Uncategorized
Social Media Newsrooms (oder Lounges) für Bibliotheken
Laut Eric Kubitz sind Social Media Newsroom spätestens seit August 2009 in Deutschland angekommen. Ein Social Media Newsroom (etwas charmanter: Social Media Lounge) ist eine Webseite, auf der verschiedene Social-Media-Aktivitäten einer Person oder einer Institution aggregiert sind. Also so etwas wie ein offener Presse-Bereich. Die typischen Merkmale sind nach Wikipedia:
* Es gibt keine „Anmeldung nur für Journalisten“,
* es gibt keine Sperrfristen,
* die Informationen sind allen Multiplikatoren gleichzeitig und in vollem Umfang zugänglich,
* die Ansprechpartner (PR-Verantwortliche, aber auch Unterne...
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Infobib - June 23, 2010 Author: CH Tags: Bibliothek Web 2.0 öffentlichkeitsarbeit bibliothek20 blogsuchmaschine flickr google news netvibes pipes social media social media lounge social media newsroom social-software twitter weiterbildung yahoo
Fun with Yahoo Pipes.....but not me
I've been reading Gary Green's twitter feeds about his 'this made me' idea on yahoo pipes. The idea was quite simple but very ingenious and set out on his blog:-I wanted to put together a visual representation of things I consider influenced me throughout my life and made me the person I am today, just as an experiment to see what I could come up with.I’ve actually managed to turn that idea into something concrete using yahoo pipes to pull through information I added to a Google spreadsheet. yahoo pipes then automatically created the map with markers and details of influences in those markers.Anyhow the result can be fou...
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librarytwopointzero - June 3, 2010 Author: library2.0
Clever Kate gets a prize from me…
There I was, trying to create a single file of RSS feeds for all the blogs in the 30 in 30 challenge using yahoo pipes, so people could add them to their feed reader… when Kate Bunker did something a whole lot smarter….
She created a Netvibes page widgets for feeds from all 29 blogs. Now *that* was using her noodle.
Post 2 of the 30 posts in 30 days challenge.
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Librarians matter - June 2, 2010 Author: Kathryn Greenhill Tags: Uncategorized
CARPET lässt mit sich reden
Das CARPET-Projekt ist vielen Infobib-Lesern vermutlich bekannt. In der Selbstdarstellung heißt es, dass die effiziente Nutzung von Werkzeugen und Dienstleistungen für das wissenschaftliche Publizieren unterstützt werden soll. Im Einzelnen werden
eine Erhebung zu vorhandenen Publikationsinstrumenten aufbereitet und in Katalogform dargestellt,
ein Kompass zur Analyse für die Bestimmung einer Strukturierung und Systematik entwickelt,
eine Kollaborationsplattform entwickelt und zur Verfügung gestellt,
Leitlinien zu Standards und Interoperabilität erarbeitet und
ein virtuelles Kompetenzzentrum aufgebaut.
In einer Um...
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Infobib - May 21, 2010 Author: CH Tags: Open Access Web 2.0 carpet fachkommunikation pipes tools yahoo
Imaginings Around Emerging Infoskills for Digital Librarians
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of leading a couple of sessions in the OU Library for Library staff on exploring the emerging digital skills terrain, and the extent to which it could, or should, fall to a new wave of Digital Librarians to support related service delivery and skills development.
The first session focused on supporting digital and networked researchers, the second on the sort of practical infoskills that I rely on a day to day basis that I get the feeling aren’t really being provided or developed as much as they should be…
Both sessions were structured in a similar way – I rambled on...
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OUseful Info - May 20, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Library Presentation
Netvibes y la integración de Información en Ciencias de la Salud
El día 6 de mayo, organizado por el Grupo de Salud de la SEDIC, Helena Martín Rodero, de la Biblioteca de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Salamanca, impartió el Taller “El desarrollo de Netvibes para la Integración de información en Ciencias de la Salud: El proyecto Medical Information Library and Knowledge (MILK)”
El taller se inicio con una breve exposición teórica sobre los “Mashups” y las “Aplicaciones de Escritorio” en el contexto de la web 2.0 y Google. En sus inicios, estas nuevas herramientas frenaron el desarrollo de los grandes portales generalistas tipo yahoo, y facilitarón la ...
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infoesfera.com - May 18, 2010 Author: contacto at infoesfera.com (Infoesfera.com) Tags: Bibliotecas Actividades Add new tag Biblosfera Ciencias de la Salud escritorio virtual Mashup Netvibes talleres grupo salud
Netvibes y la integración de Información en Ciencias de la Salud
El día 6 de mayo, organizado por el Grupo de Salud de la SEDIC, Helena Martín Rodero, de la Biblioteca de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Salamanca, impartió el Taller “El desarrollo de Netvibes para la Integración de información en Ciencias de la Salud: El proyecto Medical Information Library and Knowledge (MILK)”
El taller se inicio con una breve exposición teórica sobre los “Mashups” y las “Aplicaciones de Escritorio” en el contexto de la web 2.0 y Google. En sus inicios, estas nuevas herramientas frenaron el desarrollo de los grandes portales generalistas tipo yahoo, y facilitarón la ...
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SEDIC - Blog - May 18, 2010 Author: Elena Primo Peña Tags: Actividades Ciencias de la Salud escritorio virtual Mashup Netvibes talleres grupo salud
CALL 2010 Presentation: Media Monitoring and Current Awareness - the New Tools
I was one of three panelists today in a CALL2010 (Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual conference) session entitled Media Monitoring and Current Awareness: Tools in the Information Explosion. I explored some newer tools that people should develop some familiarity with including some features of Google Reader, yahoo! pipes, widgets, the semantic web, and mobile tools.I will share my slides via the CALL conference website, but in the meantime am sharing them here so everyone can grab the links and start exploring! A couple of "goofs" in this set of slides: you have a slide towards the end which is actually my notes w...
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Connie Crosby - May 10, 2010 Author: Connie Crosby
Programming, Not Coding: Infoskills for Journalists (and Librarians..?!;-)
A recent post on the journalism.co.uk site asks: How much computer science does a journalist really need?, commenting that whilst coding skills may undoubtedly be useful for journalists, knowing what can be achieved easily in a computational way may be more important, because there are techies around who can do the coding for you… (For another take on this, see Charles Arthur’s If I had one piece of advice to a journalist starting out now, it would be: learn to code, and this response to it: Learning to Think Like A Programmer.)
Picking up on a few thoughts that came to mind around a presentation I gave yesterd...
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OUseful Info - April 30, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Anything you want datajourn
Web Lego And Format Glue, aka Get Yer Mashup On
Another week, another presentation… I dunno about death by Powerpoint on the audience side, but even though I’ve started finding ways of reusing slides, it still takes me forever and a day (well, 4-6 hrs), to put a slide deck together… One day – one day – I’ll have to produce a presentation I can just give over and over again… ;-)
Anyway, here are slides for a presentation I’m due to give tomorrow (Thursday) at the University of Portsmouth. The plan is for a 1 hr “lecture”, and a 1 hr hands-on workshop session. The slides are for the talk – but also set the ...
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OUseful Info - April 28, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: Presentation
Yahoo, Now With Firehose
Wow! yahoo announced yesterday its new yahoo! Updates Firehose service in initial release. This thing sounds massive: “yahoo! Updates aggregates social updates from yahoo! and across the Web: It includes a real-time feed of every public action taken on our network … and elsewhere around the Web that users have authorized yahoo! to make available.”
That includes over 750,000 ratings a day, 8,000 reviews a day, Flickr Uploads, Delicious bookmarks, favorited items on YouTube, etc. No kidding it’s a firehose!
The actual page for the new service is at http://developer.yahoo.com/social/updates/firehose...
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ResearchBuzz - April 13, 2010 Author: admin Tags: News api realtime updates yahoo
CIL2010: LMS: What’s Out There & How to Decide
CIL2010: LMS: What’s Out There & How to Decide
The hashtag for the session is #lms if you want to follow what was said on Twitter about the session.
Lori Reed started the session. Lori works for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenberg County and needed to find a way to provide online training and manage overall learning for her library’s staff. Lori’s current LMS was working fairly well, but did not include eLearning. You could look at the roster all printed out. There is a centralized number that people can call to cancel if they’re unable to attend. They have mandatory customer service training...
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LibrarianInBlack - April 13, 2010 Author: Sarah Tags: Uncategorized
Brief session notes
Library Mashups: Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data
Nicole Engard unfortunately was in the hospital and unable to present this program. David Lee King from Topeka and Shawnee County Library filled in. Right away, he proved a point about technology by whipping out his iPhone to film a short “get well” greeting for Nicole from the crowd. After defining mashups and related terminology like web services and APIs, he discussed some easy tools libraries can use to create their own mashups – web features that mix data from two sources, such as map info from Google and photos from Flickr. Nicole’s s...
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PLA Blog - March 27, 2010 Author: elizabeth Tags: PLA Blog elizabeth goldman pla10
Understanding the Semantic Web – 3
Is the Semantic Web so immense and infinite in its possibilities that drawing out a vision for a particular domain (libraries in this instance) becomes difficult or impossible? That’s what Karen Coyle seems to be saying in her Understanding the Semantic Web: Bibliographic data and metadata report here:
It is somewhat difficult to explain what you can do with linked open data because the answer is just about anything.
And here:
If all this sounds other worldly and value, it is because there is no specific vision of where these changes will lead us.
Or is it the case that the Semantic Web crystallises the changes around li...
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panlibus - March 26, 2010 Author: Sarah Bartlett Tags: Libraries Metadata Semantic Web Understanding the Semantic Web
So What Courses Should the OU be Offering?
So it seems as if the OU’s Platform site is not soliciting ideas for what sorts of courses we should be running: I would like to study…
So if you have an idea for a course you want to study, or other offering you think the OU should make, why not go and add your idea… or vote up one of the suggestions that has already been posted.
It’ll be interesting whether any of this, err, insight is passed on to folk tasked with developing the curriculum and, err, the OU’s “product offering”. One of the things I think I’ll do is set up an alert or too on courses in particular areas, usi...
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OUseful Info - March 26, 2010 Author: Tony Hirst Tags: OU2.0
