New ARTstor

I am loving the new ARTstor. It no longer opens in a Java client, which means your normal IE browser tools are still available to you. The search is still slow, but I don't think that is avoidable. Saving images in IE is still very quirky. You either can't change the file name from what ARTstor wants to call it, or you have to use Firefox to save images to your computer. You can change the name in IE if you don't mind choosing Image Viewer as the program you want to use each time you want to open the picture (though you lose the metadata). Now that I know this and can help students without telling them they need to go to a non-public computer and download Firefox, I can live with it.

But I am so happy that it no longer hijacks my browser window! Yeah!!! Now if they can go back to making JSTOR work better... it was much better before they tried to make it more like ARTstor.

Big Games, Part Deux

This morning I received a comment from Jenny Levine, who pointed out that I completely missed the link to the audio presentation on big games by Gregory Trefly on the ALA's gaming Web site. Duh. This was so useful, and I'm so glad she pointed this out to me. I have already listened to it (it's about 45 minutes long) and contacted two people about possibly doing one of these on our campus.

If you really can't listen to the whole thing, fast-forward to slide 45 and about 37 minutes into the audio presentation, but the earlier stuff is very helpful background info. This is where it starts to specifically discuss big games in libraries.

Almost all of the big games revolve around four basic games:

1. tag
2. scavenger hunt
3. hide & seek
4. capture the flag

Libraries are great places because they often have many branches (lots of these games are in NYC), have collections, great spaces, content, unique identifiers (call no.'s & bar codes), referees (librarians/staff), tools (computers, copiers, wi-fi, etc.) and a place to display.

He listed five undeveloped ideas for games that libraries could do:

1. Secret Agent - based on the scavenger hunt. It involves secret meeting points, and avoiding detection (no running or disturbing people who aren't playing). Collect codes, and set levels so they know how they're doing when they "level up."
2. Then/Now - this one interests me the most at the moment. In their example, they had old pictures of places around NYC from the library's archives, and the players have to go around and take pictures of how it looks now. I want to do this around campus.
3. Rent control - the real real estate game. I don't understand this.
4. Babel code - using the foreign language materials in the library to break codes
5. Dewey's Demons - finding codes online or in the stacks to create and take care of creatures. I don't understand the details of this either.

To do one of these big games, look around your everyday world. Give normal activities goals, look for simple ways to track moves. Once you have a plan, run a test play (or he called it playtest) several times until it works, because it never works the first time.

This presentation is definitely worth listening to, and I hope we can do the Then/Now thing with freshmen this fall.

Who said nobody cares about books anymore?

My dad says all of these strange tornadoes and floods are God's way of saying He's *&%@ off at what we're doing to the environment. I don't doubt that it's global warming. But here's an encouraging story about the floods in Iowa, or at least the pictures. A very large number of volunteers showed up at the University of Iowa Main Library and formed human chains to get the lower books out of the special collections area of the basement. They were clearly working hard to save the books, and while there was a lot of flood damage to the building, it sounds like very little happened to the books.

So there to anyone who thinks no one cares about books anymore!

Just Married

I wasn't sure if I should write about this in my blog or not, but a grad school friend who reads my blog commented that it was wrong to discuss my cats peeing on the the blog without mentioning I got married on Saturday. The rest of my pictures can be found on my Flickr account, but this is my favorite picture:

Mobilizing Generation 2.0

I just returned the book Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0. This would be a great book for non-library people who were new to Web 2.0 or at least skeptical of it, but otherwise is of little use. I went to Amazon to see what other readers thought of it. I think the professional reviews only came straight from the book, so they were overwhelmingly positive, of course. I was surprised to see all three amateur reviewers were overwhelmingly positive, too.

I'm not saying it is bad. It is clearly written and the author's enthusiasm comes through clearly. It's just there was nothing new for me. If you are in libraryland, then I suggest reading Meredith Farkas's book instead. It covers the same material, but makes the library connection clearer. It's also longer, but it does cover more Web 2.0 tools.

I expected much of the book to be old news, but I was hoping to find out more about getting young adults involved... engaged. That will remain a mystery for the time being. I found out about this through a purchase slip, I am glad we didn't bother to purchase it.

Clicker Article

I'm going to get back to reading articles on various library issues, and I will share the interesting stuff I get out of them (since that's usually only tidbits anyway). For our instruction meeting today, we had to read "A clicker for your thoughts: Technology for active learning" by Hoffman and Goodwin.

The first half of the article is an overview, but the second half is one of the more interesting articles I have read about clickers with some very practical points. Here are some of the highlights:

• Test out the clickers on faculty. We have several classes with faculty at the beginning of the year. This serves two purposes, you get to test it on a more patient and smaller audience, plus faculty around here like toys, which turns into an advertisement of why they would want to bring their students into the library.
• Use the clickers to assess their previous knowledge and past experiences.
• They can be particularly useful for Freshman Composition. You can use them to ensure students understand basic concepts and services (i.e. review questions after each section), and create a more interactive session.
• They can be used to start conversations by discussing results of the class poll. Follow the clicker questions up with open-ended questions they can discuss in groups.
• Use them to ask opinion questions. Everyone likes to make their opinion heard, though they don't necessarily want to raise their hand in front of the class cold turkey.
• Use "other" as a choice when appropriate. They can then discuss the "others" if many of the students selected that option.
• It is important to carefully identify the learning objectives first, and carefully craft the clicker questions around those objectives so that the clickers are more than fancy toys.
• Use the countdown feature of the software to keep students on track and make it more game-like.
• The authors want to explore using clickers to mimic game shows like Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I'm not sure how this works, perhaps the clickers will let you know who clicked first??? I do Jeopardy fairly often, and determining who came in first is always difficult.
• You can divide a class into groups, give each group a clicker and a computer. Give the group a problem, then have them answer with the clicker in a reasonable amount of time (using the countdown click if necessary). The software can count how many right answers each team got, so prizes can be awarded at the end. They can follow-up these questions with how they got the right answers and what resources they used/discovered.

We just bought clickers and I haven't used them yet. But I want to use them in a lot of the classes I teach next semester. This article has given me more specific ideas of how to use them effectively.

Reading to Save the World

The Sci-Fi Channel came up with a list of the top 10 books you must read to save the world. The list readers came up with is:

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
3. Dune by Frank Herbert
4. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
5. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
6. The Stand by Stephen King
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
10. The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Of these, I have only read 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. I need to get busy on the rest of these futuristic stories.