L&LR staff blog

Kudos to Social Work (i.e. Kev!), for being the first to use one of my formatted RefWorks books feeds in anger – see below a screenshot of Kev’s Social Works new books feed embedded into a live Blackboard site using feed2js (click for bigger):

If you have created your own feed, could you please:

1. Let me know.
2. Consider using Google FeedBurner to allow email subscriptions [which has worked well at Holbeach]; also to create a sensible feed URL à la http://feeds.feedburner.com/SWNewBooks
3. Add the feed to this UL wiki page?

And to see how ingesting an RefWorks feed into a VLE (Moodle, in this case) ought to be done, you might want to take a look at these videos on Owen Stephens’ TELSTAR project blog.

“TELSTAR is working on three main types of integration between the RefWorks reference management software and technology enhanced learning at the Open University.”

I’ve shown a couple of people this idea that Julie and I have been developing for Holbeach – that of using RefWorks to manage a new-books list for the relatively small number of new titles that we receive each year at the campus LRC – and that can be embedded into Blackboard or a subject web page.

The advantage of using RefWorks (apart from the fact that many L&LR staff are reasonably familiar with it) is that the RefWorks shared folders do most of the work for you.

If people like it, there’s no reason you can’t start using it straight away. I’ve already a trip planned to Hull next month to see if it’ll work for colleagues there.

First, here’s the end result: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HolbeachLRC

Now, here’s how it’s done:

• Every time Julie gets a PO slip back for an order she placed, she logs into her RefWorks account, searches our catalogue for the book, and imports it.
• Julie has created a RefWorks folder called ‘Holbeach new books‘, and shared it publicly. All newly-arrived titles are added to this folder on import.
• This is the clever bit – RefWorks allows you [PDF, p.4] to make the contents of a shared folder available as an RSS feed. Here’s the feed for the Holbeach new books folder. You can treat this like any other RSS feed – follow it in Google Reader / wherever, embed it into a web page using Feed2JS, etc.
• But… it’s not very pretty.
• So, in comes Yahoo! Pipes. I’ve created a pipe which takes any RefWorks shared-folder RSS feed with books in it (not designed to work with journal articles or other items – perhaps that’s phase II). This pipe, which you can find at – http://pipes.yahoo.com/lincoln/newbooks - does the following:
  1. Looks for, and extracts a valid(ish) ISBN from each RefWorks item;
  2. Creates a new link to our catalogue which looks up this ISBN for each item;
  3. Displays a book-cover image from Amazon.co.uk matching that ISBN (with a link back to Amazon through our affiliate scheme), next to a description of the book (manually added to RefWorks), and an extra link back to the original item record in RefWorks (marked by the RefWorks icon: ) – I’ve just added that last element, today, because I think it’ll be useful to give students & staff the option to take each item and export it to their own RefWorks account. Also to give credit where credit’s due, and recognise that RefWorks is the source of the information!
• The ‘prettified’ RSS feed from Yahoo! Pipes is then fed through Google Feedburner, in order to give it a stable, sensible URL, collect stats on subscriptions and hits, and to allow email subscriptions.

Couple of slight problems / areas for development: we’re finding it necessary sometimes to ‘tweak’ the ISBN before it can find an Amazon cover image. Maybe with a better use of regex in my pipe, that wouldn’t be necessary? Also, at the moment Julie is manually adding the paragraph description to each item after import. I’m sure that somewhere out there exists a source of book descriptions / reviews that I could pull in automatically (hello, library mashup fans?!) – that would streamline the process a bit.

In which direction is the University of Lincoln headed over the next few years, in its relationship with technology, its provision of [access to] information [literacy], in its students’ expectations, and in its ability to meet and/or challenge that expectation?

And what will the University Library look like as a result of that direction?

I’d recommend that everyone with an interest in the immediate future of university education reads these | two blog posts. They are comments (by Joss and Sue, respectively, both of CERD), on two recent, overlapping reports:

• Bradwell, P. (2009) The edgeless university: why Higher Education must embrace technology. London: Demos
• Hughes, A. (2009) Higher Education in a Web 2.0 world. Bristol: JISC

Others will no doubt have already written or are composing their own analyses of the two reports, so I’m not going to (I don’t “do” reflective blogging). But I couldn’t resist a couple of observations about libraries and their place in the world envisaged by both reports.

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Disappointingly, the JISC document (HE in a Web 2.0 world) doesn’t explicitly mention the role of the university library at all. Perhaps that’s just an artefact of the way the report’s been written, but the Persecuted Librarian™ in me just can’t help but blame it on the usual invisibility of libraries in high-level debates about HE.

And, while the word ‘facebook‘ appears 12 times in the body of the report, ‘book’ (or even ‘e-book’ / ‘ebook’) appears not once, and ‘journal’ only in the context of blogging (i.e. a personal, rather than an academic journal).

Ok, so the Caxtonian walls that artificially divide knowledge into these mushed-tree-bound units may have crumbled a bit, but… really?

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The Demos report (Edgeless university) is more expansive: recognising the library’s role in supporting and scaffolding Open Access; “extending the ways that people can access material” (p.35). And there is an entire section (on p.44) dedicated to “Libraries 2.0“, which says:

“Simply storing information can no longer be their main function.”

Sidestepping the fact that storing information is rarely as ’simple’ as it might appear*, there’s a problem with the notion that we’ve already or nearly reached the stage where Google, the Open-Access (OA) movement, and the illicit digitisation & circulation of copyright-infringing material via the Internet can see students’ information needs met instantly, cheaply, and without any requirement for a “quaint” (p.27) – and expensive – library service to meet those needs.

That scenario – that universities no longer need access to library services to meet their raw information needs – just may well come to pass in some wholly-OA future utopia, but the idea that in 2009 we’re already at a point where anyone who wants reliable, ongoing access to a range of serious, scholarly journals doesn’t require “membership of an academic library” (p.26), just isn’t true, as any student, in almost any academic discipline, should be able to attest (well, to be fair, you don’t need a library as long as you’re prepared to pay large credit card bills for the purchase of individual e-journal articles at £20 a pop).

Unpleasant a truth it may be for some, but the majority of scholarly and professional information sources are not yet free and openly accessible online.

But here’s where the ‘simply storing…‘ quote is right on the money: even if we can’t abandon our traditional acquisitive function, we must give equal attention to convincing the University of the value of the other, less-well-appreciated aspects of our role. Limitless information only really becomes educationally useful if it’s possible to subject it (or the students as they access it) to the processes of highlighting, filtering, interpreting, assessing, comparing, contextualising, (re-)presenting, annotating, supporting, troubleshooting, and helping.

And, what’s more, we need to start making sure now that the University is aware that sort of stuff is exactly what we’re good at. If and when the day arrives that readers’ information needs are sated entirely by the Internet for free, there will be if anything an even greater need for the guiding hand of the information specialist.

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*The same section of the report imagines a hypothetical university asking why it needs a library “just to buy licences so users can access work online” – well, in part it’ll be because purchasing and maintaining access to licensed subscription content is an expensive and complex business, and you’re gonna want someone who knows what they’re doing to handle it for you – and if it’s not going to be your library, you’ll only have to develop the expertise elsewhere.

I’ve just spent an extremely useful morning in the Friary Learning Centre at Lincoln College, talking to learning centre staff about “Practical Library 2.0“.

I was very pleased to have been invited to talk to colleagues there, and to give a demo (entitled “Library 2.0h no, not again…“) of how library workers can use [mostly] free tools and technologies to create useful, practical enhancements to their catalogues, web pages, and services.

As an aside, I gave a similar talk/demo last week as a guest at the meeting of LiSN (the Lincolnshire Information Services Network), a knowledge-sharing group of library workers representing most of the university, college, public, and specialist libraries in Lincolnshire.

Below is a list of some of the tools I used in my demo: this is my fundamental Library 2.0 toolkit as it stands… what else would you add?

1. RSS

Surely RSS is the one web standard / technology (and the one Web 2.0 acronym – whatever it’s been decided that ‘RSS’ actually stands for this week) that all library workers should be encouraged to get to grips with as early as possible? It underpins just about everything else in this list, and yet it still seems to be a tool that’s only partially appreciated at best.

Anyway, here’s a video introduction to RSS (from TeacherTube) which is as good as any other I’ve found…

2. Google Reader (reader.google.com)

What can I say? It’s the first thing I check when I log on: before my email, before MyFaceTwitSpaceBook / whatever, and it’s usually the last thing I look at before I go home. I was sceptical about it before I signed up (in my ignorance), but it’s fundamentally changed the way I use the Web, very much for the better.

I didn’t even have time this morning to talk about Google Alerts, or about using Google Reader as a feed ‘blender’. Or the fact that there are plenty of other feed readers out there, and – who knows? – there may be one even better than Google Reader.

3. WordPress (wordpress.org)

We use the WordPress  μ (mu = multi-user) free, open-source blogging and web publishing platform at the University of Lincoln (see: blogs.library.lincoln.ac.uk for a selection of our Library blogs).

4. Feed2JS (www.feed2js.org)

A great tool for turning any valid RSS feed into a bit of code that can be embedded in any web page (as long as you have the keys to edit the page!). You can use the centrally-hosted service at feed2js.org, or you can install it as a service on your own site (which can help to make it faster).

5. Delicious (delicious.com, although I prefer their ‘old’ URL of del.icio.us)

Social bookmarking plus tagging = exploiting the “wisdom of the crowd” to find the gems in an increasingly sprawling, confused World Wide Web. And a delicious list can be exported as an RSS feed and embedded into a page (using feed2js, above): I think it’s probably the easiest way of maintaining a list of useful web links for a subject, requiring close to zero web design expertise or effort.

6. CiteULike (www.citeulike.org)

This is a relatively new site to me; probably because I’ve been concentrating on developing and promoting RefWorks at the University I haven’t had a lot of time to explore free alternative reference managers. CiteULike doesn’t seem to be as fully-featured as RefWorks, but the interface is a lot cleaner, and it’s got RSS feeds in one click. Verdict: bears further investigation.

Bibliographic / reference management + RSS = the future of libraries, no?

7. LibraryThing (www.librarything.com)

I don’t know why all librarians aren’t on here. I like this and this and this and this and this and this and this.

And this (books from my personal wishlist):

8. University of Huddersfield Library Catalogue (webcat.hud.ac.uk)

The birth of the 2.0PAC, going on in the Wild West (Riding) as you sleep.

9. Mashed Library (mashedlibrary.ning.com)

I’m very much looking forward to next Tuesday…

Organised by the East Midlands Section of University College and Research Group on the 28^th April and held at the Kimberlin Library, De Montfort University, Leicester, Focus on your teaching was primarily an event for librarians teaching in HE institutions but held relevance for many other staff.

It struck me that many of the things that were presented and discussed at the event, Lincoln already carried out. Lincoln could present a similar event, perhaps based around the mid-point strategy review action plan, along with contributions from library staff from other HEIs.

For me, the main theme of the event was about teaching information skills to students without the traditional ‘talk-demo-do’ method of introducing a database then demonstrating its various search functions, before letting students perform keyword searches themselves.  Although technology probably holds the answer, I felt that  no single answer existed. Students often find databases themselves are the problem because they are so hard to find, hence the reliance on Google.  Derby University’s Emma Butler and Catherine Varney demonstrated how the software Captivate offered a possible alternative; recording what the demonstrator performed on screen (i.e. a demonstration on how to retrieve articles from a database) and the ability to record a voiceover. Allegedly it’s as easy to use as PowerPoint. The presenters recognised that the software is a supplement to inductions and workshops but could not become a replacement. Emma and Catherine suggested that the short online tutorials work fine as a refresher and could be placed in an area on a VLE, like Blackboard.

Chris Powis from Northampton University discussed the dilemma of the strategic learner within HEIs who only want information they need to complete an assignment or course of study.  Librarians, he said, were ‘tool/search focused’ and students are ‘result/content focused’. Bridging the gap was key to maintaining relevance of the profession, otherwise there’s a risk of disengagement.

Richard Hall from De Montfort University also spoke about technology responding to the transitional phase of universities moving away from the traditional method of teaching students information skills.  Richard said that Blackboard is used as a safe environment and more challenging methods of reaching students needed to be deployed to enhance student progression, improve retention and the learner experience, like utilising Facebook or other Web 2.0. The audience discussed afterwards that they needed to achieve relevance not try to be perceived as trendy.

I have some handouts from the event if you would like copies.

Daren Mansfield (Academic Subject Librarian)

David Lee King has some suggestions… (picked up on UKeiG’s combined feeds Yahoo Pipe).

Warwick, Loughborough, Huddersfield, Durham, Exeter, Liverpool, UEA, Birkbeck… on facebook libraries all.

Joss Winn from C.E.R.D. has put together a Netvibes ’start page’ for his Learning Lab projects, and included (on the Research section of the page), some useful ‘widgets’ of information from the Library, including our blog feed, the podcast tours of the GCW, and search boxes for the catalogue and for the Institutional Repository.

You can see it at:

• http://www.netvibes.com/thelearninglab#Research
  

A few people have asked if we can (and whether we should) set up individual subject-specific blogs.

The thing is, we’ve already got ‘em (kind of):

• Architecture
• Art & Design
• Forensic Science
• Humanities
• Journalism
• Law
• Performing Arts
• Policy Studies
• Psychology
• Social Work

Each link is a separate RSS feed of postings to the main L&LR news blog, filtered down to only those posts which have been tagged with the name of a subject. Any new posts you add with the same subject tag will show up in the feed. And you can create a new subject feed by writing a post and creating a new subject tag.

These feeds could then by displayed in (e.g.) Blackboard using a tool like feed2js.org, which renders the RSS as JavaScript code (which you can then paste into an item in a Bb folder).

And if we ever wanted to have entirely separate subject blogs in the future, we could just convert the tag-specific feed into a separate named blog. Semantically there’s no difference in WordPress between a blog, a category, and a tag.

Paul

Jo Alcock of the University of Wolverhampton has written a guest post to Brian Kelly’s UK Web Focus ‘blog, with an overview of Wolves’ Web2.0 initiatives (blogging, social networks, wikis, Google calendar), and explaining some of the barriers they’ve faced in getting these services accepted.

• http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/library-20-at-the-university-of-wolverhampton/

(Spotted on the UKeiG ‘blog.)

Google have launched an API for their Book Search, and Dave Pattern is already wondering how to nail it to his OPAC…

Paul