Monthly Archive for December, 2006

New Year = New Adventure

Published on December 29, 2006 in Day to Day. 3 Comments

A little over three months ago Library Zen was launched.  My goal for the site was to provide my thoughts as a LIS student and contribute to the library profession the best that I could.  Since that time I like to think that I’ve accomplished these goals. 

While the month of December has been slow on the blogging side, I assure everyone that behind the scenes there has been a lot happening.  I continue to add submissions to LISZEN and am excited for the holidays to cool down before getting serious about posting again.  But these things are not what have taken a majority of my time.

As many have read in the “about me” page, I have been working at West Branch Public Library for over 7 years.  As of today I’m switching from Network Manager to off-site Technology Consultant as I move down to Farmington Hills (Michigan) to be closer to Wayne State University.  In addition to that, I have accepted a position at Salem-South Lyon District Library where I will get to work with some amazing people.

With a new job, new apartment, and new semester this New Year has brought many changes.  But it’s just one more adventure and many more things to learn and share.

Garrett Hungerford

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Happy Holidays!

Published on December 24, 2006 in Day to Day. 0 Comments

Twas the night before Christmas, and in the blogsphere
Not a blogger was posting, not even here.
It won’t be long till I have more to share
As many plans are now brewing with care.

So Happy Holidays from Library Zen
Can’t wait for the New Year when I see you again!

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Welcome ALA TechSource Readers!

Published on December 14, 2006 in LISZEN. 0 Comments

I know I’m a day late in saying welcome, but that’s how life has been with finals week at Wayne State University.  If your not sure what the welcome is all about, go read “Custom Zen: Enlightened Information Retrieval” by Teresa Koltzenburg.  I had the honor of speaking with Teresa about the past, present and future of LISZEN.  I’d tell more, but the interview does it all for me.

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LISZEN: Trends Open (but still beta)

Published on December 5, 2006 in Day to Day and LISZEN: Trends. 0 Comments

The iron curtain has lifted, but that doesn’t mean that LISZEN: Trends is feature complete.  Those that had a sneak peek over the last two weeks will notice the the site is now more visually appealing.

Feed Me

For those that aren’t aware, LISZEN: Trends is a real-time/social library tool, much like Digg (except for librarians).  It allows you to submit news, vote on news, and subscribe to news.  There are currently three choices of RSS feeds:

Queued:

When an article is first submitted it goes into the Q.  Subscribe to this feed if you would prefer to view news before it goes mainstream.  You can, also, view this by clicking on “Discover LIS Trends.”

Published (recommended):

Once a submitted article receives a certain number of votes (currently set at 4) it becomes “published.”  Subscribe to this feed if you prefer news that has been sorted out and reviewed by peers.

All:

This feed contains both “Queued” and “Published”

If you are wondering, “if LISZEN: Trends requires 4 votes to get published, why is there news with 2 votes on the published page,” fear not.  During testing the setting was at 2 votes, but will now require 4 on future posts.  The aim is to have about 35% – 40% of daily submissions make it to “published” status.  This means that the number of required votes will be adjusted periodically to ensure balance, and that your not bombarded with news.

Categories

What I am still looking for is help on finalizing the “categories” within LISZEN: Trends.  Here are the current categories:

  • Academic Libraries
  • Books
  • Cataloging
  • Censorship
  • Children
  • Continuing Education
  • Employment
  • General
  • Humor
  • Programs & Events
  • Public Libraries
  • Special Libraries
  • Technology
  • Video
  • Young Adult

One is still able to tag posts, but broad library topics for categories would help.  QUESTION: If you could categorize the library profession into 15 general areas what would they be?

Since I mentioned tagging, I want to draw everyone attention to the tag cloud for the site (nice, ehh).

… And More

Since I don’t want everyone repeating the same errors to me, here are things I am aware of:

  1. “tell a friend” link does not work (yet)
  2.  Avatars are gone?  (For a bit, but they will be back)

With finals quickly approaching my response time to emails will suffer.  But feel free to post any observations, bugs, compliments, and suggested categories in the comments.

That’s all for now.  In the words of Dylan Baker, a LISZEN: Trends beta tester, Get Trendy!  And get over to LISZEN: Trends…

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LISZEN: It’s Buzzing

Published on December 1, 2006 in Day to Day. 0 Comments

School Library Journal released the December issue of its monthly periodical today.  In it is a wonderful blurb on LISZEN in the Buzz section (same article on CNN Money).  Lately, I’ve been snooping the web and have found LISZEN has become a popular tool.  I’m excited to see schools getting in on the action.  Here are a few Information & Library Science programs that have begun promoting LISZEN as a resource:

I like to think of LISZEN as the ultimate library resource for quick “additional readings.”  Obsession for additional readings could be why academia is loving LISZEN so much- not saying they’re big on that (okay, so I am).  Discovering that universities are linking to LISZEN tells me that behind all this “buzz” is a tool worth using.

 So, that is the update on the current state of LISZEN.  As always, continue to send me blogs links and feedback.

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Patrons Without Email

Published on December 1, 2006 in Day to Day and Technology. 0 Comments

YouSendItWe have all had it happen. Somebody brings in a disk and wants to send the pictures out to their tech-savvy son. The problem is they don’t have an email account. You could take them to Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail and have them go through the series of questions, but shouldn’t there be an easier way?

At YouSendIt, you can easily upload a file and send it out to any email address. The best part is that you don’t have to have an email address to use the product. Just type in the email were the file needs to go and upload the file (if it’s a lot of photos I’d .zip it first). Hit send and your done.

The recipient get an email that looks like this:

YouSendIt Email

This service came in handy a few weeks ago for me while trying to help a man send some pictures to his son. He didn’t have an email address and didn’t have time to to go through the 5 page process that Yahoo! and Hotmail require to setup an account.

Try it for yourself: YouSendIt

Past articles on YouSendIt from: Tom Keays and LawLibTech.
Found via LISZEN: “YouSendIt” Search

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