The Ubiquitous Librarian

iPods as a foreign culture learning tool

This is a slide from a recent talk.

This is an idea that we are still brainstorming. I read about a community college (somewhere in Illinois or Pennsylvania perhaps?) that uses iPods as a foreign language learning tool. Building on that theme, I am interested in creating an immersive experience for students that are planning to study abroad. Georgia Tech set a goal for 50% of undergraduates to study at least one semester abroad, so I feel there is an opportunity for the library to participate in that mission.

So why not take an iPod and fill it with foreign language tutorials and exercises, as well as a wide range of cultural and entertainment content: video clips, music, sports highlights, tv shows, and commercials. Add tons of images such as landmarks, currency, street maps, public transportation schedules, and fashion. Along with newspaper and magazine articles, restaurant menus, travel guides, and literary works.

This could be a very rich multimedia experience, but it doesn't stop there--- the special ingredient is student-added content. Upon their return to the US, students are invited (or perhaps it could be part of a class assignment?) to share their adventures in the form of text, video, images, and audio recordings. This adds more depth to the collection—first hand encounters from their peers.

I imagine offering an iPod for several of the countries that students travel to. For example the "French" iPod or the "Chinese" iPod and putting them on reserve with other accessories as well as making some content available online so that students could download the material themselves. This becomes somewhat of a historical archive that reaches beyond our school, and is potentially useful for anyone interested in traveling or studying those countries. It's a great branding opportunity for Georgia Tech.

That's the idea in a nutshell-- still coming together. We'll figure out copyright along the way, but I think it is something that could be cool and beneficial. We'll see if it gets any lift.

For more on iPods and Academia read about Duke's experience.

MORE
A friend just mentioned customs, manners, and traditions as well. What else???

Calendar Hacks

Jay Forrest, one of our Information Associates, built a suite of calendar applications for the reference desk. These apps were all designed in PHP. We use Oracle’s CorpTime product as our internal calendar system - great for scheduling meetings - but it doesn’t offer all the functionality that we need. Here is a sample of Jay's work.

IN/OUT BOARD

The in-out board replaces the old and tired whiteboard. Our staff is scattered throughout the building, so this let’s us know who’s in and who’s out. It’s nice because it provides a global status for everyone.

DESK TODAY

Shows who is on desk—as well as who has whatever other meetings, classes, etc. This can be useful if someone calls in sick and you need a replacement or if you need to find someone to switch hours with later in the week.

CALENDAR

This digital calendar replaces a large print calendar used by staff to indicate planned time off. We have this info on our personal calendars, but it helpful to see who’s going to ALA or who is taking time off in the month of July.

If you build it…. ? Thoughts on Wikis

This isn’t an “every library in the world should use a wiki post” but I wanted to share a little about our experience. Last summer, a handful of us started developing a wiki that we could use in the public service desk. I was very inspired by the C&RL News article Something Wiki This Way Comes and also Meredith Farkas’ Wiki: The Ultimate Tool For Online Collaboration.

We ended up going with editme.com primarily because it was hosted, edits like MS Word, and was affordable ($5 monthly). I wanted something that would be easy for staff to embrace without having to learn any coding. I called it Answers, hoping to build the purpose into the name.

Everyone was supportive once I provided a demo—previously we’d had some abstract conversations that didn’t go so well, but once people saw the proof-of-concept they were into it. We’re talking about 17 staff members with a vast age and tech experience range.

I wanted Answers to function similarly to the wiki at Miami University (described in the Something Wiki article) (and thats RedHawks, not the Canes) which was: 1) to alert people on desk about anything critical that day, such as printing issues, catalog problems, etc, and 2) to store information with archival value, or for the old timers, to serve as a digital vertical file. 

The wiki could cover research strategies for the hot assignment of the week, or current database problems, as well as storing step-by-step guides for printing on Library computers from a laptop, or where to find blueprints for campus buildings. The potential is there for it to be a valuable tool, especially since it’s searchable.

Long story short, we launched Fall 2006 and it didn’t work. No one added anything. They’d often remark, “Brian, you should add this to your wiki” or they would forget that the answers to “irregular” questions were available to them within a few clicks, but they didn't use the wiki and instead searched through old emails. It seems I was unable to transfer the community and convenience concepts effectively, and I found myself not updating since others didn’t appear to be using it either.

I was discouraged, but I am going to make another go at it. I’m going to meet with everyone individually and spend 10-15 minutes showing them the website, highlighting the tools, demonstrating how easy it is update, and encouraging them to log-in and add/change some content.

We’ll see what happens, it’s a cultural change, but hopefully I can help them break the barrier. This was a lesson in the difference between buy-in and adoption. Anyway, if anyone has had success, please post and enlighten us all.

Sample edit screen

Sample Index (it's searchable too) 

endnote + iTunes

In Post-Memorial Day recovery I submit the thoughts of a student. The post asks: What do you do with papers that other people wrote?

    

I decided to stay out this one, but fascinating to read students chime in about bibliographic management systems. I am intrigued by the “what if you had something that was kind of iTunes-like, but for papers and slides and stuff, and you could sort and search and organize and have a central place to stash all of them?”