We presented our idea of the Library staff competencies at the UCL Summer School this week. Also our first go at creating a Prezi-tation!
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Bookmarks
Using online bookmarking sites sounds like a great idea - so you don't have to keep saving your favourites in your browser and you cen see them at any computer you sit down and log on at. I thought I'd check out whether I can do this without signing up to yet another online tool - I's really like to just log on to something once and have everything I need right there. So I dicovered that such a tool does of course exist in google and now I can start collecting my bookmarks in - you guessed it - google Bookmarks! Yep, added the gadget to my iGoogle page so now I'll be able to stop emailing links to myself....
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Diigo
The idea of being able to bookmark your favourite web pages is nothing new - so you can see your favourite pages wherever you are logged on. But what if you could save your favourite pages with annotations, 'sticky notes', highlight the bits of the page you found most useful, etc? That's the idea behind Diigo. I think. It's like a combination of an online 'library' and bookmarking. Looks really good actually, unfortunately the toolbar which you need to install in order to add items just point blank refuses to work on my computer. (Note: my computer is Not Happy at the moment. It works for everybody else) So I'm going to go and try it at home but for now, have a look at the introductory video at http://www.diigo.com/
Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.
Monday, 11 July 2011
11 and a half (week 2 thing 3) things
I'm already begining to lose track of what I've done for 23 Things and what I'm doing for 11-and-a-half Things but it doens't really matter since I'm sure they will overlap anyway. I'm pretty sure I won't end up doing 34-and-a-half-Things....
Anyway 11-and-a-half (can I call this EAAH for short?) this week has me looking for social networking sites, especially for scientists. So here goes: there is Nature Network which describes itself as the 'professional networking website for scientists around the world' hosted by the Nature Publishing Group. As you'd expect, there's a collection for forums, blogs, discussion topics, as well as lists of 'neetworked' people and a helpful Q&A section. You can look at the blogs, forums etc without logging in. And apparently 'NPG Libraries' is the third 'most active' Group! I was quite impressed that a search by affiliation for Univeristy College London has over 150 hits. (searching UCL brings back results from UCLA, etc)
Another site which I stumbled across is BioMedExperts. You can't have a proper look at this one until you register, but you can have a sneak at what members' profiles look like if you use Google's advanced search - search for a name and specify within the site biomedexperts.com. It seems to be a little bot more like an online space to publicise yourself, your research activites, publications, etc.
I was alerted this morning to a newish looking site, Knowledge Blog . This is a JISC funded intiative with the aim to bring researchers together to discuss their work yet avoiding the hassle and delays of traditional publshing/reviwing/disseminating/discussing routes. The idea is that people 'publish' their articles as blog posts, which are then peer reviewed by suitable selected experts, who also reply by blog - so the whole process is completely open (see How it works)
It seems to me that social networking is still in its infancy and in a few years time some winners will emerge on top and some losers will shuffle to the bottom into obscurity and the cyber-graveyard.... until then, any one researcher can't possibly keep up with many of the possibilities on offer for social networking - that;'s if they have the time to get involved at all! A recent RIN report has some nice nuggets of feedback from researchers about all this.
Anyway 11-and-a-half (can I call this EAAH for short?) this week has me looking for social networking sites, especially for scientists. So here goes: there is Nature Network which describes itself as the 'professional networking website for scientists around the world' hosted by the Nature Publishing Group. As you'd expect, there's a collection for forums, blogs, discussion topics, as well as lists of 'neetworked' people and a helpful Q&A section. You can look at the blogs, forums etc without logging in. And apparently 'NPG Libraries' is the third 'most active' Group! I was quite impressed that a search by affiliation for Univeristy College London has over 150 hits. (searching UCL brings back results from UCLA, etc)
Another site which I stumbled across is BioMedExperts. You can't have a proper look at this one until you register, but you can have a sneak at what members' profiles look like if you use Google's advanced search - search for a name and specify within the site biomedexperts.com. It seems to be a little bot more like an online space to publicise yourself, your research activites, publications, etc.
I was alerted this morning to a newish looking site, Knowledge Blog . This is a JISC funded intiative with the aim to bring researchers together to discuss their work yet avoiding the hassle and delays of traditional publshing/reviwing/disseminating/discussing routes. The idea is that people 'publish' their articles as blog posts, which are then peer reviewed by suitable selected experts, who also reply by blog - so the whole process is completely open (see How it works)
It seems to me that social networking is still in its infancy and in a few years time some winners will emerge on top and some losers will shuffle to the bottom into obscurity and the cyber-graveyard.... until then, any one researcher can't possibly keep up with many of the possibilities on offer for social networking - that;'s if they have the time to get involved at all! A recent RIN report has some nice nuggets of feedback from researchers about all this.
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
23 Things, Thing 4
Thing number 4 (23 Things) is to look at Twitter, RSS and Pushnote. Here is where I have to confess that although I do have a Twitter account, I don't use it. Already I've got too much to look at: I have a feed reader for my RSS, a Google homepage for this that and t'other, my work email, my home email, there's LinkedIn too....!
So now I'm following a few people I think look really helpful. I don't know whether I'll find time to keep tabs on Twitter as well as everything else, but obviously other people do! It seems to me that it's most useful for people with mobile devices.e.g. at conferences. I think it's so easy to get overloaded and you need to pick and choose the right tool for the right job. I do like the idea of using Twitter to ask questions though - that's one brilliant thing about Web 2.0 - if you've got a question, it's a great way to get a whole variety of helpful answers (provided anyone actually sees your question of course) - and Twitter could be really good for this.
So now I'm following a few people I think look really helpful. I don't know whether I'll find time to keep tabs on Twitter as well as everything else, but obviously other people do! It seems to me that it's most useful for people with mobile devices.e.g. at conferences. I think it's so easy to get overloaded and you need to pick and choose the right tool for the right job. I do like the idea of using Twitter to ask questions though - that's one brilliant thing about Web 2.0 - if you've got a question, it's a great way to get a whole variety of helpful answers (provided anyone actually sees your question of course) - and Twitter could be really good for this.
Monday, 4 July 2011
Look at these blogs
So Thing number two for my 11-and-a-half-Things is to find blogs of interest for the biomedical community. I really like Ben Goldacre's blog http://www.badscience.net/ - you might have read the book Bad Science, which points out how and why some 'science' in the media is misleading (to put it politely) - the blog is witty and easy to read but can also be very revealing - Dr Goldacre really knows his stuff. I find some of the comments people leave useful too. It might be a good one to keep an eye on for any pertinent examples to use in information literacy or critical appraisal teaching....!
OK, for people interested in research and researchers (and who isn't?!) the Research Information Network has a couple of blogs, one for the team and one for guests - these aren't updated all that often which makes them much easier to follow in my opinion - quality over quantity! You'll notice also that the most recent guest blog was on the value of libraries which naturally goes without saying :-)
What else? Well, just wanted to mention Library Research Support by Jenny Delasalle at the University of Warwick - another excellently written blog geared to researchers. This blog often has some really useful and in-depth posts, particularly for those of us interested in research outputs, bibliometrics, publishing research and the like.
OK, for people interested in research and researchers (and who isn't?!) the Research Information Network has a couple of blogs, one for the team and one for guests - these aren't updated all that often which makes them much easier to follow in my opinion - quality over quantity! You'll notice also that the most recent guest blog was on the value of libraries which naturally goes without saying :-)
What else? Well, just wanted to mention Library Research Support by Jenny Delasalle at the University of Warwick - another excellently written blog geared to researchers. This blog often has some really useful and in-depth posts, particularly for those of us interested in research outputs, bibliometrics, publishing research and the like.
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