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Contents

I would like to (or ask if someone else was willing to) demo/discuss/show/tell

  • How to use Word Tracking/Track Changes
  • I'd like to show another institution's LibraryThing For Libraries implementation and get input/opinions on whether or not it'd be worthwhile for WSU to acquire. - Mark
  • WorldCat lists, WorldCat API - comparision of features - Al

Background and other resources

  • Tech/Toolz is informal group organized to share new discoveries they made about technology and its uses.
  • If you haven't already discovered it, the iLibrarian blog is EXCELLENT for keeping up with just this sort of thing at [1]. 6/13/2008 Linda
  • Sarah Houghton-Jan (The librarian in Black and former IA in Terrell) posted a link on her blog to a list of quick guides to common software (Microsoft, Mac, and adobe mostly) they’re all 1 page 2 sided and cover the essentials. I just printed out the one on Photoshop CS3 and it’s going to be a big help next time I try my hand at Photoshop. These might be good to be able to reference at the desk or your desk. [2] 7/3/2008 Steve
  • Tech Tools for the Basic Computer User The list of shortcuts and basic tools keeps growing with addition by bloggers. Check out [3] for lots of great ideas to help you in your every day computer use. 10/9/2008 Kay

Bookmarks

Bookmarking databases that expire on you...

A lot of databases which we commonly use can't be easily bookmarked because they have a "session ID" and once that ID expires, the bookmark is no good. You can get around this manually:

  1. Bookmark the database as normal (note: these are Firefox instructions - in IE they're called "Favorites," not "Bookmarks")
  2. Open Griffin, and go to the Griffin page that contains the hyperlink to the database.
  3. In Griffin, right click the link to the database and from the menu that pops up, select "copy link location"
  4. Go to the Bookmarks menu in your browser, right click on the bookmark in question, and from the menu that pops up, select "properties"
  5. In the box that pops up, paste (CTRL-V) that copied link into the "Location" line. (note: in IE, instead of "Location" its labeled "URL")

This will keep the bookmark, but the link will now be the same one that is in Griffin - it'll start a new session whenever you click on it, and your bookmark will therefore be eternally good.

This is the best way I've found to keep WorldCat close at hand and cut out having to find it through SearchIt! 6/12/08 Mark

Bookmarklets

One search input field, many points of interest + bookmarklets ...

  1. Tinyurl to test site for bookmarklets and search destinations : [4]
  2. Bookmarklets are at the bottom of the page - you can add by left-clicking and then dragging to your toolbar. To use, highlight any term (or set of terms for griffIT, summIT, and gooporal - isbn 10 for amazIT) in any page that allows js to be executed from (amazon does not and neither does worldcat on most pages) and then click on bookmarklet.
    • griffIT -> griffin catalog search
    • summIT -> summit catalog search
    • gooporal -> limits search results from google based on drop down to the right of the text input box, default is the last 24 hours
  3. Added the vizIT (highlight search term and be sent to [5]) as that was created during the discussion.
  4. This just in! An alternative to adding the search engine for a specific site to your browser -> site:search bookmarklet : Search the site you are currently on for any text you currently have highlighted using Google (leave blank to map entire site).
  5. Feel free to send me any bookmarklets you want added to the scriptorium or if you have suggestions for ones that you would like written.

Big "Thank You!" to everyone - any excuse to share and get together is a good one and I look forward to more - 6/12/08 scott

Firefox

To delete the Firefox Add-Ons everyone (including me) mentioned:

  1. From the top menu, select "Tools", and select "Add Ons" under that.
  2. You'll get a menu of add-ons and can click on one and then click "Delete" to make it go away. So play with something, and if you don't like it, delete it! 6/12/08 Mark

Firefox Add-On: Add to Search Bar 1.7

  1. This is the tool (Firefox only) which lets you add new searches into the list of search boxes at the upper right of your screen. [6] After installing (and probably restarting Firefox):
    • Go to any search box.
    • Right click in it.
    • Select "Add to Search Bar."
    • In the pop-up box that shows up, give it a new (shorter!) name, or a new icon if you like.
    • Done!
  2. If you go to the menu of search engines in the upper right, you can now select this and run a search without having to go to that site.
  3. Important: This may not work for more complex databases, or for those which expire - it does not currently work for OCLC WorldCat (I haven't tried it in the more generic worldcat.org interface) or EBSCO. It does work for Ulrichs (yay!), Griffin, and SearchIt!, among many others. It even works with CrossSearch (searching multiple databases at once in SearchIt!).
  4. Note that if you select limits before you right click in the box, you'll carry those along. So, for example, if you go into Griffin, set one dropdown box to "Title" and the other to "Journals, Magazines, Newspapers," and then right click and add to search bar as above, the saved search box will be for journal titles in Griffin. As Diane said - it turns the search box on a given page into a search engine on your browser, cutting out our having to go find the pages that the search boxes are on.
  5. If you want to delete one of these Searches: from where you select which type of search to use, if you click on that then at the bottom of the box that pops up it will say "Manage Search Engines" and you can delete them there. So if this doesn't work with a given search, just delete it! 6/12/08 Mark

Firefox Add-On: LibX

  1. If you want to install this, here is the WSU version.
  2. For general information, see the main page for LibX.
  3. For a good listing of what this can do, look at the test page for the WSU version - this is the page which I really needed to have to demo this. Ignore the tech stuff and jump straight to "Part 2" on that page, and you can see links to how FindIt! carries over onto sites such as amazon, alibris or the NY Times Book Review, or how it recognizes things and turns them into links. In section 2a, if you have installed LibX, you'll see its ability to auto-recognize ISBNs, PubMed IDs, and hook them into Griffin or into SearchIt!, or the ability to highlight things like authors'names or article titles and then right click and search for these in Griffin or with FindIt!
  4. This really is a pretty amazing tool currently used at universities worldwide. One nice thing about it is that there's a team at Virginia Tech updating this regularly, so every time Amazon (or someone) changes functionality and breaks this, people are there to fix it again, and it'll auto-update at your end. As noted, I'm not a big fan of the toolbar, but happily they now have added the ability to disable it, and toggle it back on if you want. Once we change our link resolver to recognize DOIs properly, this is something which may be worth promoting to faculty, and I'd love any feedback anyone cares to lend in the meanwhile. 6/12/08 Mark, updated 6/20/8

Firefox Add-On: OpenURL Referrer

Here's a very cool and useful tool that I've been using for a bit - its a Firefox add-on that reads embedded COinS in bibliographic metadata and provides a direct link to Find it@WSU. It needs to be primed with the correct link resolver for WSU, but that's really easy to do - just click on the Find Local Resolver button. The way it works is like what happens when you use Google Scholar and see the written-out "Find it at WSU" link, except this allows you to see it in the form of our official graphic (so now in GS you'd see both!). It means that anytime you find a link to something that has an embedded COiNS code even if its not via GS, you can immediately see if we have it. The URL for the Firefox extension is [7] 6/12/08 Lorena

Firefox Add-On: Meebo

You can set this so it will automatically log you into Meebo. It also has mini-popups in the lower corner of your screen (like Outlook) for incoming IMs, and you can drag and drop links . Note - you can hide the vertical box so that you don't see it during general browser use. [8] 6/12/08 Lorena

Firefox Add-On: Top 20 scholarly Firefox add-ons

Benson Varghese writes: “The popularity of Firefox continues to grow primarily because of its speed, ease of use, and the availability of free add-ons. As the amount of scholarly material available on the web increases, so to does the need to an efficient means to find, sort, organize, and cite the material. Here are 20 of the best tools available on Firefox that researchers can choose from to build a customized, highly efficient research tool.”... Res Ipsa Blog, Aug. 23. 9/30/2008 Kay

Firefox Add-On: ScreenGrab!

Allow you to take easy screenshots of a whole web page as well as internal parts. The nice thing is it will stay in your clipboard (usually) so you don't have to save it before using it, although you can. [9] 6/12/08 Lorena

Firefox Built-in Features: Eight things you didn't know you could do

A recent PC Magazine article [10] reviews eight more things that can be done with Firefox 3.0 that are actually built in to the software, no need to download add-ons. I found some of these very interesting and hope you will too. 10/1/08 Kay

Websites

Rainmaker

Found at [11]. You can make a word cloud by entering a website url or pasting lists of words in the title. Color and background can be customized. All words are linked to Google. Code can be copied and added to a website and links changed as needed. 6/12/08 Diane

SlideShare

Post your PowerPoints there and more people will see them and you will get gatecounts. Check out mine at [www.slideshare.net/loenglish] . You can assign permissions and allow people to download your presentation, or even embed it in a webpage/blog post. [12] 6/12/08 Lorena

Google Trends

For anyone who likes graphs/stats, this is a lot of fun to play with : example google trends comparison of two variable search terms another with four search terms to test and limited by region - 6/13/08 scott

Screen shots

From Alison Aldrich, NN/LM PNR Technology Outreach Coordinator University of Washington Health Sciences Library Seattle, WA 98195 aldrich3@u.washington.edu

Do you frequently capture screenshots for use in presentations, online tutorials, and printed materials? Gone are the days when creating good screen captures meant struggling with complicated image editing software. Here are three tools designed to give your screenshots some extra pizazz. [13]

9/17/2008 Added by Diane

WorldCat.org platform

Given the planned Summit discovery system migration to a WorldCat Group catalog and the success of the WorldCat Local implementation at the University of Washington, this is a great time to become more familiar with the WorldCat.org platform.

You can create a free account at WorldCat.org. Once you've done so, you can use WorldCat.org to create lists of items, bibliographies, and to add your own user reviews. Lists is a very useful feature for tracking materials in an area of research or interest. This list can be private or public, and you can easily use a public list as the source for an RSS feed. Also, items on a list can be exported in five bibliographic formats: APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, and Turabian.

Finally, OCLC provides code snippets that enable you to embed a WorldCat.org search box on any web page.

WorldCat.org can be accessed here: [14]
(Look in the upper right corner of the page for account creation information.)

For examples of the RSS feed and the WorldCat.org search box, see this site: [15]
(Lower section of the right pane: the "Resources on native XML technology" feed draws from a WorldCat.org list that I created. Just below this RSS feed info, there is a search box for the WorldCat.org platform embedded in the page.)

6/13/08 al cornish

Wiki

CTS wiki [16]

This wiki has procedures for processes in the CTS unit. Detailed information on procedures is provided. When we set up the word cloud on our web page, some of the links will go to this wiki. 6/12/08 Diane

Twitter

About Twitter - The Library Success Wiki

All Atwitter: Want to Try Microblogging? - School Library Journal

ALA TechSource Annual Twitter Report - Report from 2008 American Library Association Annual Conference shows Twitter as a tool for those who attend conferences, as well as those who cannot. To quote WSU's own Nicholas Schiller, "Twitter means never having to eat alone at a conference!"

Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide

Network Thinker: Twitter

Twibinars - "A twibinar is a web conference or seminar and Twitter mash-up where conversations take place in real-time before, during and after the webinar, on Twitter." - a backchannel

Twittermania: 140+ More Twitter Tools} - from [http://mashable.com/ Mashable: Social Networking News

Screencasting

About Screencasting - Wikipedia

Once created, screencasts can be uploaded to sites such as YouTube or Blip.tv where they can be watched, or embedded in webpages, blogs, etc.

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