iTunes U

Apple recently sent out one of its first emails promoting iTunes U, which claims to presently contain more than 50,000 educational audio and video files from top universities, museums and public media organizations from around the world. Here’s a link to more info and a video tutorial.

It’s rumored that UCSD is planning to participate at some point, but so far it’s only UC Berkeley and Davis that are listed.

excerpt: “Now your favorite destination for music and movies is also a great place to entertain your brain. iTunes U in the iTunes Store offers free audio and video content from top universities, famous museums, public media stations, and other cultural institutions. So whether you want to learn from the world’s leading thinkers, get a sneak peek at the latest MoMA exhibition, or simply brush up on your Spanish, iTunes U makes it easy. To see for yourself, watch the tutorial.”

Wordle clouds

I’m not sure exactly how you’d use this–I’m thinking presentations.. But Wordle is just really nifty. Paste in some text or a url and it creates a lovely little cloud for you. Try it!

LOEX 2008

This is painfully late, but hopefully I can get it posted before all the ALA updates! The theme of this year’s LOEX was Librarian as Architect: Planning, Building and Renewing. Slides and handouts for some of the presentations are here. I’m highlighting three sessions I attended. . . Continue reading LOEX 2008…

Updates From LOEX Of The West 2008

I’ve just returned from LOEX in lovely Las Vegas. It was a short, intense, great experience–I wanted to share some of the great resources and methods I picked up while I was there. One session I attended was The Cephalonian Experience: how to bring some Greek sunshine to your library orientation given by Nigel Morgan from Cardiff University in Wales. This method is hard to explain quickly, I’d encourage you to read his short article: MORGAN, N and DAVIES, L., 2004. Innovative library induction- introducing the ‘Cephalonian Method’ Sconul Focus, 32, pp.4-8. Essentially the library instruction session is interactive, colorful, spontaneous, incorporates music and I am totally going to try it in the Fall. Nedra Peterson’s It Came From Hollywood: using popular media to illustrate information literacy concepts in the classroom was another winner-It was library instruction interspersed with film and tv clips that demonstrated certain important research techniques and strategies- Party Girl of course, but also Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and one of my favorite scenes from High Fidelity, when Rob organizes his record collection autobiographically. She has all of her resources in RefShare.
Another favorite was Peer Review 2.0: giving today’s students the tools to create tomorrow’s scholarship on the emerging web by Anne-Marie Deitering & Kate Gronemyer. Thought provoking and smart as hell, bringing up issues of what Authority really means. Check out Anne Marie’s blog post on their presentation here and then do as I did and put info-fetishist in the feed reader of your choice ASAP.

U of Chicago building giant underground library

Steven Bell says:

At the University of Chicago, where the student hangout is the library and a prize is awarded annually for undergraduate book collecting, officials announced Monday plans to build another tribute to the university’s bookish character. A glass-domed, mostly underground library, to be built just west of the Joseph Regenstein Library, will have space for 3.5 million volumes, allowing the university to keep its entire collection on campus as other top academic libraries are building off-site facilities to store books. The new library comes as universities are digitizing their collections and moving books from overflowing stacks to off-campus storage sites. Read more here

And I say, isn’t this interesting? wonder where the $$ is coming from?

I Love This Blog!

It’s pretty great in my opinion..

Best Tools For Visualization

Read Write Web has a nice list of visualization tools for teaching and otherwise. Take a look here. Some of these are incredible tools..I’m currently in love with the Visual Thesaurus.

Map Of Social Network Use Worldwide

The full size version is here

Found it here.

Whose Headquarters in Kyoto?

Check it out at .04 & .08…

Lovely Inspirational Posters

The University College Falmouth has had the outgoing graduates make inspirational posters for the incoming freshmen. This is a terrific idea–who better to give advice to newbies than the people who just went through it? The graphics are varied, interesting and beautiful.

Some of my favorites? “Be Adventurous. Don’t Use Helvetica For Absolutely Everything” and “Don’t F*#K Your Flatmate”. Which isn’t to say the sweet ones don’t slay me just as easily. They’re for sale and available for viewing at their Flickr site.

Via Kitsune Noir