IU Librarians’ Day - 05/15/09 Emerging Technologies & Libraries: What’s new & useful to libraries Chanitra Bishop, Instruction & Emerging Technologies Librarian, Herman B Wells Library, IU-Bloomington Jian Liu, Head, HPER Library, IU-Bloomington

Organizational Tools

Read it Later  Firefox extension that allows you to save pages of interest and read it later.  If you come across a website you want to read but don’t have time to read it, you can use read it later and it was save the web site.  Save amazon.com or other web pages with material you want to review later  Once you have read the site you can bookmark it if you would like to keep a permanent bookmark or you can deselect it.  No need to clutter your bookmarks with sites you only want to read once. Instead of ing URLs to yourself.

Read it Later  Temporarily bookmark a web page  Keeps “bookmarks” from becoming cluttered  Works on a variety of browsers  Ability to easily permanently bookmark a page

Awesome Highlighter  Allows you to highlight text on web pages and add post-it notes  It provides a link for you to share the highlighted page  Allows you to show people the important part of a web page  Makes it easy for you to send a web page to a patron without the need to write a detailed  Help you remember why you saved a web page

Awesome Highlighter Feature  No need to create an account, can go to web site  Available as a Firefox extension & bookmarklets are also available for Internet Explorer  Creating an account allows you to:  See all your highlighted pages  See what you highlighted on individual pages  Go directly to highlighted pages Note: Post-it note feature does not work in Internet Explorer

I-lighter & Wiki-lights  I-lighter is similar to Awesome Highlighter  You have to sign up for an account, but no need to long in when extension installed  Works with social software tools  Twitter  Delicious  Wiki-lights is  part of I-lighter  forum that allows groups to collaborate, post & share information, ideas  Post directly into blog  Group members can upload documents, PDFs and PowerPoints  Can add messages to message board  Note: Saves home page of the web page instead of exact web pages

Awesome Highlighter or I-lighter Which one to use?  Choose Awesome Highlighter if:  You only need to highlight and a web page  Don’t want to sign up for an account  Choose wiki-lights if:  You need collaboration features  You tweet or use delicious or maintain a blog

Tools for File Sharing

Dropbox  Allows you to sync your files across computers  If you work at several computers you can access your files from all of the computers  Provides a public folder that includes a “public link”  Public link can be used to add PDFs, Word files to a blog post  Send files to patrons and other librarians  Works on both Mac and PCs  Access you files online at  Share files with everyone on your team

Drop.io  Share documents, images, videos, audio without creating an account  Allows you set a specify length of time person can view the files  Can set specific permissions and allow viewers to edit, comment, delete items  Others can add additional files, voic , , links, , notes to the drop  Can share via twitter, SMS, Facebook, RSS  Can message anyone currently viewing the drop

Dropbox or Drop.io Which one to use?  Use Dropbox if  You want to be able to access your files across multiple computers  You want to the ability to provide an online link to your files, share files with patrons and other librarians  Use Drop.io  You need more tools for collaborating on a team  Don’t want to set up an account

Widgets & Other Online Tools

Feed Informer  Allows you to combine feeds from multiple sites into one feed  Feed is available in a variety of formats:  JavaScript, Flash, PHP, RSS feed  Can create a “Current News” feed that provides news from several sites news sites  CNN, MSNBC, NY Times ( )  Can be used to create a journal RSS feed for faculty that can be posted on library’s web site  Feed can display popular journals within a discipline

PollDaddy  Insert a poll or your website/blog without creating an account  Send a poll to your Twitter followers without creating an account -  Start a conversation via Twitter, Are you working on a research paper?  Close surveys after a certain date or quota has been reached, and create custom start and finish pages for your survey  Allows you to set paths for your respondents based on their responses

PostRank  Find top ranked blogs and other websites covering a variety of topics  Browse blogs/web sites to learn more about a subject area you are the liaison for and find interesting blogs  PostRank rankings are based on social engagement  Examples  writing a blog post in response to someone else  bookmarking an article  Commenting on a blog  clicking a link to read a news item  No need to create an account to browse top ranked blogs

PostRank  Create a top posts widgets (based on PostRank rankings)  Submit your blog’s RSS feed, a top posts list will be created  You can choose the time period that you want the top posts to be created from  Year, month, week, day  the number of top posts you would like to show  Allows you to highlight older articles  Highlight articles readers found most useful

Poll Everywhere  Allows you to poll your audience and get instant feedback  Audience answers via SMS text message or the web  Can be used to make library instruction session more interactive  Students can respond via text messages to questions and view the results  Evaluate the instruction session  Ask questions to find out what students learned/understand

Flickr Search Tools

Compfight  Allows you to limit search to Flickr tags or text  Also allows you to search for creative commons pictures

FlickrStorm  Advanced search allows you to search creative commons photos  Can search for a specific type of creative commons license  Suggest additional search terms to find more pictures  Saves your current search history  use the tray to add photos and link to them  Can’t limit search to “text” or “tags”

Tag Galaxy  Great for visual learners  Represents Flickr tags as the solar system  The keyword you use is the sun  related keywords are planets Click on a planet to see pictures

Questions

Resources  Computers in Libraries Conference 2009 Computers in Libraries Conference 2009   Some web sites to learn about new technologies  Mashable – Social Media Guide Mashable  Tech Crunch Tech Crunch  Idea Shower Idea Shower  ALA TechSource Blog ALA TechSource Blog