Connected Librarians Day #cld13 #librarians

Connected Librarians #CLD13

The yearly Library 2.013 is upcoming on 18-19 October 2013.

A Library 2.013 pre-conference event has been planned as  Connected Librarians Day on October 14th. This is an open, online, and free event.
The hashtag is #cld13.

The schedule for the day is as follows:
(More detail can be be found here: http://www.library20.com/page/connected-librarians)

11:00am US-Eastern Daylight Time (5 pm GMT+2)
"Leading the Charge to Connect the Library, Classroom, and Curriculum: A View from Library Leadership" - Panel Discussion
Description: In this dynamic panel discussion, three members of Follett’s Project Connect team will share their views on the future of the library and explore how librarians are central to successful 1:1 implementations and the digital shift.

Panelists:
Mark Ray - 2012 Washington State Teacher of the Year
Gail Dickinson - AASL President
Susan Ballard - former President of AASL
Moderator: Britten Follett
Blackboard Collaborate Room Link:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=LIB2013Part1


12:00pm US-Eastern Daylight Time (6 pm GMT+2)
"The Library as Makerspace"- Kristin Fontichiaro
Description:  Defined as groups of creators who come together to design, plan, and create products using both digital and non-digital tools, makerspaces are popping up in library-centered conversations. While makerspaces can include cutting-edge technology, it takes more than 3D printers, computers, and robotics equipment to define them.

Bio: Kristin Fontichiaro is a clinical assistant professor and coordinator of the school library media program at the University of Michigan's School of Information.
Blackboard Collaborate Room:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=LIB2013Part10


1:00pm US-Eastern Daylight Time (7 pm GMT+2)
"Virtual Library Instruction:Tools & Tips" - Stacy Creel
Description: This presentation includes a discussion on a variety of online library instruction tools and methods for use in today's libraries. It includes tips and tools on static (vodcasts and online pathfinders) and interactive online (wikis, quizzes, live classrooms) presentations.
Bio: She is the advisor for the Graduate Certificate in Youth Services and Literature and received the Exemplary Online Course Award from USM in 2013.
Blackboard Collaborate Room:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=LIB2013Part101

"Teaching the Teachers: Integrating Technology into Library Instruction" - Amanda Nichols Hess
Description: Librarians everywhere - in schools, in public libraries, in colleges and universities, and in other settings - are increasingly charged with instruction. This might be in K-12 classes, or in workshops, or in one-shot instructional sessions for a college course. As they are asked to teach more, librarians are simultaneously tasked with bringing technology into their instructional practices. However… are librarians adequately prepared and equipped to do this? Moreover, do they feel prepared and equipped to do so meaningfully?
Bio: Amanda Nichols Hess is Assistant Professor and eLearning/Instructional Technology Librarian at Oakland University in Rochester, MI.
Blackboard Collaborate Room:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=LIB2013Part100

2:00pm US-Eastern Daylight Time (8pm GMT+2)
"[Re]Envisioning the Role of Librarian as Educator in the Digital Information Age" - John Shank
Description: This session will focus on how blended librarianship provides a vision for how librarians can be at the intersection of the learning and knowledge becoming a learning hub for their campus. Learn how In the digital information age, the blended librarian becomes a leader, who acts as the mediator and guide, to accessing and making sense of the ever expanding universe of information in all the forms that it takes.
Bio: See http://www.linkedin.com/in/blendedlibrarian
Blackboard Collaborate Room:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=LIB2013Part102


The technical details of joining the conference from a computer or from mobile can be found here:
http://www.library20.com/page/connected-librarians
The presentations will be available if you are not able to watch it on the scheduled time!


Blog post by Karen du Toit. Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives.

Library 2.011 Worldwide Virtual Conference in November

Library 2.011 WorldWide Virtual Conference
#Lib2011

The Library 2.011 conference is upcoming on 2 & 3 November 2011. 

The conference will be online and available across multiple time zones. It is a free attend.

All we need to do to be updated about the latest news and conference updates is to sign up at the Library 2.0 network.

The Library 2.011 conference is a unique chance to participate in a global conversation on the current and future state of libraries. Subject strands include the changing roles of libraries and librarians, the increasing impact of digital media and the e-book revolution, open educational resources, digital literacy, shifts from information consumption to production (Web 2.0), multimedia and gaming spaces, libraries as community centers, the growth of individualized and self-paced learning, the library as the center of new learning models, understanding users in the digital age, assessing service delivery, and defining leadership and information professional careers in a networked and changing world. - Library 2.011 Conference

Steve Hargadon, the Co-Chair of Library 2.011 sent out an email to remind participants to spread the word as far and wide as possible for a globally inclusive conference. They have sign-ups from 135 countries so far!

The hashtag for the conference is #LIB2011
It is great to be able to connect with our peers globally in the virtual domain.

Library 2.0 - "The future of libraries in the digital age!"


Blog post by Karen du Toit, Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives. 

Paper.li - a great tool for link building, content curation and social networking

Today's SABCMediaLib.li

Paper.li is a curation tool that publishes daily on-line newspapers automatically generated by predetermined keywords and hashtags from Twitter and Facebook, as well as from RSS feeds.

The SABC Media Libraries started their own newspaper SABCMediaLib.li a month ago.
The results are very positive:

• After a month Paper.li is already the biggest referring URL for our blog.
• As referring site it comes third after Google.com and Google.co.za.
• We have gotten a lot of RTs and mentions on Twitter because of the Twitter update every day on the SABC Media Libraries twitter account: SABCMediaLib
• The online newspaper has brought a daily stream of recent events, thoughts and content in the arena of libraries and archives (keywords and hashtags that were selected) that would have gone by unnoticed.
• We are connecting with thought leaders in their fields of expertise by following and retweeting some of the valuable content.
• It does not acquire any effort on our part after it has been set up. The set-up takes about 20 minutes. From there it is only an editorial function required when unsuitable content is displayed. In this month it has only happened once that I had to delete three "adult content" articles from the paper. 

I have seen some dissenting views about paper.li, but I find the content to be extremely valuable with regards a certain niche topic. If you consider that it is an automatic process, it makes it all the more commendable. 

The most important factor seems to be the initial five selection criteria. They are the most important to ensure good quality content making its way to the newspaper. When you are not happy with the content being generated, you can also go and change your criteria. The next update of the newspaper will generate the new selection criteria results. 

We have a Knowledge Café #LibCafe upcoming in two weeks' time, and for that purpose we have started another Paper.li newspaper. The topic covers Knowledge Management and Knowledge Cafés.

The Daily Knowledge Café 

What are your thoughts on Paper.li?

Blog post by Karen du Toit, Afrikaans Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives.

Google data mining tools for journalists and information specialists



 Google has free online data mining tools available that have the ability to impact our news operations in a far-reaching constructive manner! Journalists and information specialists need awareness of these tools that can be utilized to effectively mine information already available in the public domain.

We had the opportunity to attend a workshop by a Google team for journalists, editors and media workers on 7 June at the SABC.

The pitch of the workshop was as follows:

Google provides journalists with a powerful set of tools, to help find, extract and understand information. The workshop will cover ways to find people, organisations, and events all in real-time, as well as to track trends and opinions. And, to ensure journalists stay on top of issues or beats, Google also offers automated and personalized search agents or 'bots' that independently scour the web for you, issuing alerts the moment new information is found.

Journalism itself is changing though. Audiences are being swamped by the sheer volumes of information available online, especially as citizen journalists and agencies such as the UN, World Bank, and governments begin releasing raw data. Simply reporting the information is no longer the most important role for media. The best journalists are instead beginning to help audiences make sense of all this information, by analysing and organizing the raw data. 

Learn how free tools like Google Fusion Tables, Google Refine and even Public Data Explorer can make it easier for our audiences to understand complicated information by turning the raw numbers and text into animated maps, graphics, and graphs.
These tools also allow newsrooms to disaggregate or deconstruct news stories into geographic or demographic data, which allows us to build customized news products that are automatically tailored for people's location or their socio-economic profiles. This ability to personalize news, for consumption on mobile phones or the new tablet computers, gives us revolutionary opportunities for inventing new ways to tell our stories.

Peter Barron (Executive Director Communications Google) and Julie Taylor (Communications Manager Google South Africa) of Google Communications Africa presented the workshop about some of the online tools that are available to us.

Google’s advanced search capabilities were discussed – they call it a “surgical tool”.

- The search box can be used as calculator & currency converter & metrics conversions.

- Google Realtime search is an“up-to-the-second social updates about hot topics around the world”:

• Twitter is a great way to find people to quote.
• Discussions on blogs are a great way to find information.

- Youtube can be utilized as a way of generating user-generated content (citizen journalism).

- The Journalist Toolbox is a compilation of all of the tools available to journalists at the moment (http://www.journaliststoolbox.org/)

- Google Timeline view is a great way to visualize a story over a certain period of time (http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline/#start)

- Google Books, which already has made available over 7000 books, is available as well. http://books.google.com/  Journalists and writers are able to publish directly to World libraries, and to get a book out in two months (for example a journalist with an in-dept story).

Some more tools are available here: Options http://www.google.co.za/intl/en/options/



Justin Arenstein spoke more about data journalism, which he successfully implemented being an award winning investigative journalist based in South Africa.

The tools that can be utilized for advanced storytelling were mentioned, and it needs an investigation to see what can be utilized for our purposes.

- Google Ngram – analyse phrases and concepts http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/
- Google Public Data Explorer – tools to analyse government data http://www.google.com/publicdata/home
- Google Fusion Tables – turn structured data into graphics http://www.google.com/fusiontables/public/tour/index.html
- Google Refine – cleaning up messy data http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/
- Google Maps http://maps.google.co.za/ - use to plot information and news correlated to geographical location, for example the census
- Google Data Visualization – “a dynamic chart to visualize several indicators over time”
http://code.google.com/apis/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/motionchart.html
- Google Public Data Explorer http://www.google.com/publicdata/home
- Google Data Wiki http://datawiki.googlelabs.com/
- Open Data Kit http://opendatakit.org/
- Google City Tours http://citytours.googlelabs.com/ - a cache of information where the landscape “speaks” to a person
- Google Goggles http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text - mobile app for searching
- YouTube Feather – videos for low bandwidth http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta (which can be successfully used in Africa with its bandwidth problems)
- Google Moderator – voting tool http://www.google.com/moderator/#0

Google’s blog about their work in Africa: http://google-africa.blogspot.com/ It helps to stay up to date with the latest work of Google in Africa.

All these tools are available for free. Some are still in the beta and testing phase, and sometimes they can be revoked by Google. It is up to the users to make their voices heard when they have found a valuable tool.

South Africa is a country rich with raw data, waiting to be mined. The possibility is there for journalists [...and information specialists] to become industry leaders by way of data mining

                                                                           – Justin Arenstein

I realize that this is just a mention or a broad overview of some of the possibilities available to us. It needs investigation and testing of the tools to see how we can implement it. It is very difficult for busy journalists who are battling to get their next story in - while there are manpower shortages -  to also follow-up on tools like these. The same goes for us as the information specialists who need to look after our collections, and battle our growing backlog issues.

But can we continue to ignore the huge information possibilities available to us through online tools?


Blog post by Karen du Toit, Afrikaans Archivist in the SABC Radio Archives.