Google Chrome, Google Docs, and the Explosion of Cloud Computing

The LACUNY Emerging Technologies Committee is pleased to announce our Fall meeting:

Google Chrome, Google Docs, and the Explosion of Cloud Computing
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
10:00am-noon
CUNY Graduate Center, Rm. 6418

Our theme is cloud computing, and our rough agenda is:

• Google Chrome: Kevin Reiss will demonstrate Google’s new browser
• Google Docs: Jill Cirasella and Maura Smale will demonstrate some of the ways that Google Docs can be used for collaborative work
• Open discussion on cloud computing: here are a few recent pieces that we can use as a springboard for discussion:
  • A recent Pew report: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/262/report_display.asp
  • An interview with Richard Stallman in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman
  • Reaction to the Stallman interview: http://blogs.computerworld.com/rms_hates_cloud_computing_says_you_should_too

Q&A and discussion are strongly encouraged throughout these informal presentations. We’ll be in a computer classroom, so we can all experiment with cloud applications during the meeting.

RSVP to Maura Smale (msmale [at] citytech [dot] cuny [dot] edu) or Jill Cirasella (cirasella [at] brooklyn [dot] cuny [dot] edu).

About Tagging

Joseph Busch from Taxonomy Strategies did a really nice talk on metadata and tagging with an emphasis on social tagging.  The Powerpoint presentation is available as a PDF at:

http://www.taxonomystrategies.com/presentations/2008/UNCTaggingTalk.pdf

XML Tutorial

Whether you want to give this a brief glance to understand what XML is or to teach yourself more in-depth XML maneuverings, this site provides an entree into XML:

http://infomotions.com/musings/xml-in-libraries/

Online apps to schedule a group for a meeting

I know some of you have used my Doodle polls to figure out best meeting dates and times before (http://www.doodle.ch/main.html) but another web application has come to my attention which has a more elegant interface for scheduling meetings. When is Good (http://whenisgood.net/) works like Doodle in that you do not need to register and are sent a URL to send out to a list of chosen invitees.

(via LifeHacker)

LACUNY Instruction Committee event: Rethinking Relevance

At the request of Robert Farell, one of the co-chairs of the LACUNY Instruction Committee, I am passing along the details about a March 21 event.

Library Association of the City University of New York (LACUNY)
Instruction Committee Spring Program

“Rethinking Relevance – Technology and Pedagogical Points of View”
(FREE REGISTRATION)

Keynote Speaker:

Tom Eland
Chair of Information Studies, Minnesota Community and Technical College

Respondents:

Deborah Richman, Vice President, Collarity (Palo Alto, CA)
Ann Grafstein, Coordinator of Library Instruction, Hofstra University
Jeff Gutkin, Director of Academic Computing, Wagner College

When:

Friday, March 21, 2008 — 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
(Lunch will be provided following event)

Where:

Borough of Manhattan Community College
Richard Harris Terrace (main entrance level)
199 Chambers St.
New York, New York 10007

Mr. Eland will be speaking on how technology has impacted the role of librarians as “disciplinary discourse mediators.”

Mr. Eland is chair of his institution’s Information Studies department and is known for having one of the most developed and innovative information literacy programs in the country. Mr. Eland teaches liberal arts classes in Information Studies that critically analyze the claims of information society advocates; the role of the mass media, the alternative press, and dissident groups and ideas in shaping American society; and the history of ideas and print culture. He also teaches classes in, and coordinates, the MCTC Library Information Technology degree program.

Respondents include:

Deborah Richman, Vice President, Collarity (www.collarity.com)
Currently working in the area of search development at Collarity, a Palo Alto based social search engine developer, Ms. Richman is also a regular contributor to the website Search Engine Watch. She has been employed with Looksmart, and About.com among other companies and recently presented a paper at the 2007 Special Libraries Association Conference entitled “Social Search Comes of Age.”

Ann Grafstein, Coordinator of Library Instruction, Hofstra University
Ms. Grafstein (MLS, University of Western Ontario, Ph.D., McGill University) is the Coordinator of Library Instruction at Hofstra University. She has spoken on information literacy at scholarly conferences, and was an invited speaker at the 4th Annual Scientific Symposium in Frankfurt, Germany in 2004. Her article “A Discipline-Based Approach to Information Literacy” that appeared in the Journal of Academic Librarianship in 2002 received the 2004 ACRL Instruction Section Publication Award. Her article entitled “Information Literacy and Technology: An Examination of Some Issues” was published in portal: Libraries and the Academy in 2007.

Jeff Gutkin, Director of Academic Computing, Wagner College.
Previously he was the Instructional Design Librarian for Wagner College’s Horrmann Library. Having received his MLS from Queens College GSLIS, he is currently completing a PhD in Educational Psychology, with a focus in Learning, Development and Instruction at the CUNY Graduate Center and an “Interactive Technology and Pedagogy” certificate under the direction of Stephen Brier. He is also the production editor of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Library Instruction Round Table Newsletter.

RSVP by Friday, March 14 to:
Elizabeth Namei
email: enamei@lagcc.cuny.edu
phone: 718-482-6019

Field Guide to Conference Flora: Wallflowers & Blackberries

Conference wallflowers. You’ve seen them. They are the ones sequestered in corners and along the walls of the cavernous hotel ballrooms and conference centers, restricted to the range their laptop cords will allow. They sit apart from the mass of the attendees who are together in evenly placed grids of stackable, padded chairs. The wallflowers recharge their laptops the night before the conference at their hotels, but fear their battery life will never be enough for them to go cordless as they record notes one session after another at a long day of conference.

The isolation of these few conference goers suggests the wallflower at the dance, the shy, perhaps forgotten, perhaps simply ignored dance goer who spends no or little time on the dance floor. It’s not odd that the expression “wallflower” to describe lonely souls comes from an actual plant. The wallflower, appropriately, lies low, exhausts itself with its efforts to bloom profusely in a single season and then perishes. Such is the fate of the wallflower at the dance and it may seem, too, to be the fate of the conference wallflower. There she sits apart from the well-socialized others, taping at her keyboard. Except, of course, there is a twist. The conference wall flower sits isolated, blooms exhaustively with her note taking throughout the presentations, and then is noticed, after the dance party, when her blog is posted online for the world to see and her comments are lauded across the profession. Conference wallflowers get their time in the sun. It just follows an early growing period in the windowless, darkish gloom of the conference room.

I’m a new laptop owner and not a long-time blogger, but my increasing involvement in LACUNY has sent me to our blog site with occasional thoughts on technology and human interaction. I like my new laptop, but I have to confess that the true electronic love of my life is my Blackberry. My non-Pearl, non-Curve, Blackberry 8700G (the kind that still has a trackwheel) turned one this past Christmas, and though she’s of an age to start walking, she rarely leaves my hand. The small size of my Blackberry allows me a mobility I see the tethered wallflowers lack. Granted, the laptop users could go cordless, and join the crowd sitting in the grid of chairs. Battery charge life is always the issue. But I have to report how liberated I felt during this last ALA conference, using my Blackberry as a note taker, sitting close to other conference attendees, and easily typing in a note or two as we chatted or listened to a speaker. I used my email function to write my notes, wrote up each session as a separate email, and then sent the emails I wrote off to my own account and to the accounts of others who would benefit from the lessons learned. I carried my Blackberry up to the panel table after my panel co-presenters and I regrouped for Q & A, and continued to easily jot down notes as a presenter answered a question from the audience.

Yes, size matters. But so does positon. Sitting against the wall near one of the few outlets in the conference room can isolate you from one of the most meaningful opportunities the conference provides, the opportunity to meet and speak to your colleagues even in the presentations are being delivered. You might be quick to say now, “but isn’t conversing during a presentation rude?” My answer to that? During my section of the panel, I encouraged the audience to engage in conversation. I ran the presentation through google and an open chat continued even as I spoke.

Technological tools can be great enhancers to what we do, but should never keep us apart from human exchange when the opportunities for the later present themselves.

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation, or, Open Access Software for the Holidays

Over the holidays I came across this fun link and posted it to CULIBS: http://www.wordperhect.net

One stalwart librarian thought he had caught a typo, but, no, it is “wordperhect,” with an “H” like in “helpful,” something every librarian tries to be.

Something else a lot of librarians try to be is up-on-the-latest-technology. We also try to be thrifty because we aren’t working in the highest-paid profession. So when we find ourselves with the cash to buy a new laptop, the thought of paying out half the price of the device for the privilege of being able to type well on it sends us out looking for alternatives, like wordperhect, perhaps.

I bought myself a new laptop in December and was looking forward to making a presentation at ALA Midwinter. The laptop doesn’t come with Microsoft Office and I wanted to avoid paying hundreds to get the package that includes PowerPoint. So, I decided, it’s now or never, time to look into cheaper or free alternatives. The dilemma here is should I go with an online host or download a product?

The argument for the download option is that you’ll have the product on your machine, it will run faster, and you’ll save the work you do on your own computer. A big contender in the download world is Openoffice.org. Openoffice was developed by Sun and meant to compete with Microsoft. The initial drawback of using it seemed to be that it didn’t offer as many bells and whistles as PowerPoint. I missed PowerPoint’s variety of slide templates, but it occurred to me that most of my slides are screen shots so I didn’t really need a colorful template for my presentation. An added feature of Openoffice is that although its default save mode has some odd file extension, you can save as a ppt (PowerPoint). This would be great if you lose your laptop on the way to a conference (not such a great thing) and have to run your flashdrive off a computer running PowerPoint (your small consolation).

The two online contenders that I looked at were Google
Docs (which offers a presentation mode) and Zoho. Show, from Zoho, is extremely attractive and very colorful. The site is even kind of Googly looking (white, clean space punctuated by bits of bright color). It has a multitude of templates and seemed like a fun way to go. The big problem with Zoho is that the export feature doesn’t seem to work (no back up copy of your work) as promised and you will be left on edge wondering at your conference if you will be able to get into your own work. Google Presentation, which is built on Sun’s Openoffice, is pretty bland but has a decently functioning import feature.

A problem with the online tools is that their performance while you create a document is as jumpy as any other online input activity you might encounter. The feature that is most praised in the online tools is the ease they offer for doing collaborative work. A very cool feature of the online tools is that chat can run in a column to the side of the presentation. Imagine. While you are presenting, the audience can pass their comments up to you in real time. You might argue that it is all a very big distraction, but I suppose a positive way to go with this is to say, no more “sage on the stage in the classroom, no more sage on the stage at a conference.”

What I settled on in preparing for Midwinter is downloading Openoffice, sending them a check for what I could afford, creating my presentation in Impress (their PowerPoint equivalent) saving the work as a ppt file and almost flawlessly (the text on one slide was a little out of order) importing it to Google. I now have a copy of the file on my own computer, on a flashdrive saved in Openoffice format and as a PowerPoint, and as a url in Google. I think I’m all set to go, but if I start making changes, I’ll run into that problem of making the changes in all of the files.

Google Presentations will not let you back up a file on your own computer (scary, right?). When you opt to email the file, all you are doing is emailing the URL. This is, though, a useful feature pre-conference. People can come into your session with your page on their laptops ready to chat. Google also only lets you save 10 MB in presentations. If you do a lot of presentations and they are long, be prepared to delete post-conference if you are running through Google for the sake of the chat feature. You can use another online host for archiving and referral purposes. Slideshare is a freebie. Maximum file size allowed is 30MB. That should work well for image-heavy shows.

Happy open access new year to everyone!

Beth

What did you learn at ACRL?

Many CUNY librarians attended ACRL in Baltimore recently and have returned with enthusiasm for the innovative presentations. One of my colleagues noted the following: “I was most intrigued by innovative use of technology in reference services–smart phones, Video IM (see attached blog for info about project at UC Merced and Ohio univ.)”
http://www.learningtimes.net/acrlblog/231/zed-shed-rocks-regardless-of-its-unexplained-name/

I would like to encourage my CUNY colleagues to note in the comments what they found especially worthwhile about this year’s ACRL conference “Sailing into the Future ~ Charting our Destiny”

Technology Conference at Princeton

I went to the conference last week at Princeton – Technology and Library Services: Meeting Today’s Users’ Needs. CUNY’s Beth Evans, Rhonda Johnson & Kate Lyons participated. The theme is similar to this year’s LACUNY Institute. There was an interesting discussion on labeling – net gen’s, gen X , baby boomers, etc. I think, especially within CUNY, that we serve many different populations so we need to find a balance with our services. What ever happened to inter-generational communication?

The sessions from the conference were recorded and these audio recordings, along with the PowerPoint presentations, are now available on the symposium website,

http://library.princeton.edu/conferences/techlibservices/agenda.php.

Introducing the book

Funny video riffing on how new technology is received and learned.