I just wanted to share a news story I came across this afternoon. Google is introducing a new site called Flu Trends (www.google.org/flutrends/) that claims to be faster at predicting flu outbreaks than traditional means of doing so. The site will keep track the instances where people search for "flu symptoms" and related searches. Since Google is able to track what state you are in when performing such searches, they think they will be able to track flu outbreaks more quickly.
If you're interested, more information is available via CNN.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
My EBSCOhost, part 2
One of the things I like so much about Google Reader is that it is a customized one-stop information spot for me. I have feeds for headlines, the weather, information about alerts/service changes on the CTA, my dad's family blog and so much else, all in one place. Now, using the saved search RSS feeds from My EBSCOhost are going to add a whole other component to this information space for me and will be definitely useful for school research.
I decided to set up two RSS feeds, one anticipating the research I'm going to have to do for the final project in one of my classes this term. Unfortunately I don't have more than general information on what I will need to investigate; I was able to set up a feed for a general search that I can further customize as I get more information from my professor. The second feed I set up is based on the research I did for a paper I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I'm still really interested in the topic (the debate between political neutrality and social responsibility in libraries) that it will be nice to continue to follow the debate as more articles are published.
I haven't come up with any ideas for searches that would help me in terms of periodicals/serials but I'm still thinking about it.
I had one additional idea of a use for search RSS feeds--My favorite musician and his band recently released a new album and I decided to also set up a search to track reviews of the new album, so I don't have to try to chase them around the internet myself. I'm pretty excited about that.
I decided to set up two RSS feeds, one anticipating the research I'm going to have to do for the final project in one of my classes this term. Unfortunately I don't have more than general information on what I will need to investigate; I was able to set up a feed for a general search that I can further customize as I get more information from my professor. The second feed I set up is based on the research I did for a paper I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I'm still really interested in the topic (the debate between political neutrality and social responsibility in libraries) that it will be nice to continue to follow the debate as more articles are published.
I haven't come up with any ideas for searches that would help me in terms of periodicals/serials but I'm still thinking about it.
I had one additional idea of a use for search RSS feeds--My favorite musician and his band recently released a new album and I decided to also set up a search to track reviews of the new album, so I don't have to try to chase them around the internet myself. I'm pretty excited about that.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
My EBSCOhost
It was really easy to set up a My EBSCOhost account--the trickiest part will probably be remembering my new username.
Setting preferences was easy as well and I really like that it is a pop-up screen instead of an actual page you have to visit. This makes it easy to see how changes you make affect what you see and you don't have to abandon a search just to change the options back if you don't like how you set your preferences.
I think these options are going to help me a lot in my research for school (and I'm not sure but I think the options will carry over for both UWM's EBSCOhost databases as well as ours, depending on which library I'm logged into at the time).
The visual search is also fun to use. I like how the connections between terms are more obvious than they were in Credo's concept map. I think I prefer traditional searching for "serious" research but visual searching makes casual browsing more fun.
Setting preferences was easy as well and I really like that it is a pop-up screen instead of an actual page you have to visit. This makes it easy to see how changes you make affect what you see and you don't have to abandon a search just to change the options back if you don't like how you set your preferences.
I think these options are going to help me a lot in my research for school (and I'm not sure but I think the options will carry over for both UWM's EBSCOhost databases as well as ours, depending on which library I'm logged into at the time).
The visual search is also fun to use. I like how the connections between terms are more obvious than they were in Credo's concept map. I think I prefer traditional searching for "serious" research but visual searching makes casual browsing more fun.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Recipes Tried and True
As promised, I tackled one of the recipes from Recipes Tried and True (the NetLibrary ebook I visited). Unfortunately, the attempt was rather disastrous. (I have the feeling Mrs. Alice Kraner left out a step or two when describing the procedure to make her chocolate pie--see page 29).
So instead I decided to turn to a recipe that I know is tried and true...my family's traditional pumpkin pie recipe. It's in the kitchen and there is a little bit of whipped topping in the refrigerator to top it with if you would like. Enjoy!
So instead I decided to turn to a recipe that I know is tried and true...my family's traditional pumpkin pie recipe. It's in the kitchen and there is a little bit of whipped topping in the refrigerator to top it with if you would like. Enjoy!
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
ebooks...and pie
"Who dare deny the truth, there's poetry in pie?" -- Longfellow
I really like the idea of ebooks and I like how convenient and portable they are for users as well as how searchable they are. Unfortunately I think the NetLibrary interface is clunky and not the most user-friendly platform (it once took Rosemary and I to figure out how to move between pages in a NetLibrary ebook). I think reference books work better as ebooks than other types of books; this probably varies by personal preference, though.
The NetLibrary ebook I found is part of Project Gutenberg. It is called Recipes Tried and True and was compiled by the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church of Marion, Ohio; published by the Press of Kelley Mount in 1894. I'm not sure this book would be particularly useful for our students, except maybe those in nutrition, history or anthropology classes (or maybe even gender studies classes, because of the commentary that accompanies the recipes).
I've been interested in old cookbooks for a long time; I've loved looking through my grandma's collection since I was little. There's something very charming to me about imprecise directions and measuring in "pinches" and "little bits." I enjoyed browsing through commentary with the recipes as well. My favorite so far comes from the chapter on pie: "Ingenuity, good judgement, and great care should be used in making all kinds of pastry" (28). Melissa thinks I should attempt one of the recipes in this ebook...I'll have to see what I can come up with. =)
I really enjoyed playing around with the concept map in Credo Reference. It would be a great discovery tool for students needing to come up with paper or research topics. However, the more I used the map, the more frustrating it became for me because it's not always very clear how the topics are related. This would not be a major issue for someone looking at a map for a subject area they have some background knowledge about--it would be fairly easy to intuit the connections between subjects if you had prior knowledge of them. Searching in a subject area outside of one's background knowledge could potentially be frustrating if the related topics aren't explicit about how they are related.
I think it's a great resource for visually-oriented people and for discovery but it's probably not the best resource for in-depth research. (Besides, Credo Reference has reference books, which are not supposed to be used for in-depth research most of the time anyway).
There may be poetry in pie, but I also discovered that there's pie in poetry. I found an interesting tidbit about pie in the process of using the concept map. The lines "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie / when the pie was opened the birds began to sing" from the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" are indeed based in history. Romans would enclose live birds in pastry shells and release them during celebratory functions...not delicious but probably quite the spectacle.
"pie." The Columbia Encyclopedia . New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Credo Reference. 23 October 2008.
I really like the idea of ebooks and I like how convenient and portable they are for users as well as how searchable they are. Unfortunately I think the NetLibrary interface is clunky and not the most user-friendly platform (it once took Rosemary and I to figure out how to move between pages in a NetLibrary ebook). I think reference books work better as ebooks than other types of books; this probably varies by personal preference, though.
The NetLibrary ebook I found is part of Project Gutenberg. It is called Recipes Tried and True and was compiled by the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church of Marion, Ohio; published by the Press of Kelley Mount in 1894. I'm not sure this book would be particularly useful for our students, except maybe those in nutrition, history or anthropology classes (or maybe even gender studies classes, because of the commentary that accompanies the recipes).
I've been interested in old cookbooks for a long time; I've loved looking through my grandma's collection since I was little. There's something very charming to me about imprecise directions and measuring in "pinches" and "little bits." I enjoyed browsing through commentary with the recipes as well. My favorite so far comes from the chapter on pie: "Ingenuity, good judgement, and great care should be used in making all kinds of pastry" (28). Melissa thinks I should attempt one of the recipes in this ebook...I'll have to see what I can come up with. =)
I really enjoyed playing around with the concept map in Credo Reference. It would be a great discovery tool for students needing to come up with paper or research topics. However, the more I used the map, the more frustrating it became for me because it's not always very clear how the topics are related. This would not be a major issue for someone looking at a map for a subject area they have some background knowledge about--it would be fairly easy to intuit the connections between subjects if you had prior knowledge of them. Searching in a subject area outside of one's background knowledge could potentially be frustrating if the related topics aren't explicit about how they are related.
I think it's a great resource for visually-oriented people and for discovery but it's probably not the best resource for in-depth research. (Besides, Credo Reference has reference books, which are not supposed to be used for in-depth research most of the time anyway).
There may be poetry in pie, but I also discovered that there's pie in poetry. I found an interesting tidbit about pie in the process of using the concept map. The lines "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie / when the pie was opened the birds began to sing" from the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" are indeed based in history. Romans would enclose live birds in pastry shells and release them during celebratory functions...not delicious but probably quite the spectacle.
"pie." The Columbia Encyclopedia . New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Credo Reference. 23 October 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Gmail
I have been using Gmail since early 2005--back when someone had to send you an invitation. I have accumulated several different email addresses over time and Gmail is by far my favorite. I've found it to be more intuitive and flexible than any of the other platforms I use and for that reason it's my primary email.
John, Emily and Melissa have all described many of the reasons why I love Gmail so much. So instead of rehashing all of the great features they mention, I'm going to talk about three other features that I've started to use a lot recently: labeling, filtering and the new * EOM * feature.
Labeling: Gmail will let you create label your email messages which is another helpful way to group emails on the same topic or from the same person (or whatever) together. All you have to do is, under the "More Actions" drop-down menu, look for "Apply Label" and then click on "New Label" and name your label. And then you can color-code your labels! I use 15 different labels (I seem to be adding new ones all of the time though). While it's simple enough to label emails myself, I recently discovered that Gmail will label emails for me if I set up a filter...
Filtering: Filtering is really simple to set up. If you click on "Settings" in the upper right hand corner of your screen, and then select the "Filters" tab, selecting "Create a New Filter" at the bottom. There are so many different ways you can set up filters. I have only been using them to label emails (especially ones from listservs) but you can have them automatically delete or archive or star emails as well. You can also retroactively filter your inbox (so if you label certain kinds of messages with a filter, you can have it label all of the emails in your inbox that match that criteria already). There is a lot of information in the "Help" section on setting up filters, including a demo video if you are interested.
EOM: I send myself a lot of email, which is probably a weird thing to do. As it turns out, though, putting something in the subject line of an email and having it show up in the top of my inbox has turned out to be a really good way of helping me remember whatever it is.
Google is very nice and helpful in that if you try to send an email without a subject line or without anything in the body of the email, it will pop-up and make sure that you didn't just forget. Granted, it takes virtually no time to click "OK" on the pop up message but if I'm sending myself a rapid succession of reminders on different topics, it can get a little annoying.
Luckily, they announced Wednesday on the "Official Google Blog" that there's a new feature that will let you bypass the pop-up reminder if you're sending an email with only a subject line. All you have to do is to add "EOM" or "(EOM)" --without the quotation marks--to the end of your subject line. I like that I don't have to turn off the notification for good, or worry about turning it on and off. In the scheme of things this is a very, very small feature...but I really appreciate how flexible they're trying to make Gmail AND how they are always adding or improving something.
John, Emily and Melissa have all described many of the reasons why I love Gmail so much. So instead of rehashing all of the great features they mention, I'm going to talk about three other features that I've started to use a lot recently: labeling, filtering and the new * EOM * feature.
Labeling: Gmail will let you create label your email messages which is another helpful way to group emails on the same topic or from the same person (or whatever) together. All you have to do is, under the "More Actions" drop-down menu, look for "Apply Label" and then click on "New Label" and name your label. And then you can color-code your labels! I use 15 different labels (I seem to be adding new ones all of the time though). While it's simple enough to label emails myself, I recently discovered that Gmail will label emails for me if I set up a filter...
Filtering: Filtering is really simple to set up. If you click on "Settings" in the upper right hand corner of your screen, and then select the "Filters" tab, selecting "Create a New Filter" at the bottom. There are so many different ways you can set up filters. I have only been using them to label emails (especially ones from listservs) but you can have them automatically delete or archive or star emails as well. You can also retroactively filter your inbox (so if you label certain kinds of messages with a filter, you can have it label all of the emails in your inbox that match that criteria already). There is a lot of information in the "Help" section on setting up filters, including a demo video if you are interested.
EOM: I send myself a lot of email, which is probably a weird thing to do. As it turns out, though, putting something in the subject line of an email and having it show up in the top of my inbox has turned out to be a really good way of helping me remember whatever it is.
Google is very nice and helpful in that if you try to send an email without a subject line or without anything in the body of the email, it will pop-up and make sure that you didn't just forget. Granted, it takes virtually no time to click "OK" on the pop up message but if I'm sending myself a rapid succession of reminders on different topics, it can get a little annoying.
Luckily, they announced Wednesday on the "Official Google Blog" that there's a new feature that will let you bypass the pop-up reminder if you're sending an email with only a subject line. All you have to do is to add "EOM" or "(EOM)" --without the quotation marks--to the end of your subject line. I like that I don't have to turn off the notification for good, or worry about turning it on and off. In the scheme of things this is a very, very small feature...but I really appreciate how flexible they're trying to make Gmail AND how they are always adding or improving something.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
proxy server errors
This may be a reminder for some of you, but I thought it would be worth sharing again. Every once in a while, you may encounter the following error message when trying to visit one of our electronic journals or resources, either through the catalog or via the Find Journals page (though I try to make sure that this doesn't happen):
Links to our electronic resources on the website and in the catalog all link through the library's proxy server. This allows students, faculty and staff who are off campus to be able to log into our electronic resources. The above error message means that the journal or resource you are trying to access has not been properly "added" to the proxy server.
If you are on campus and see this message, simply delete the proxy server address (https://login.libproxy.noctrl.edu/login?url=) from the URL to visit the resource. In this case, https://login.libproxy.noctrl.edu/login?url=http://www.nsca-scj.org/
pt/re/ssc/issuelist.htm would become http://www.nsca-scj.org/pt/re/ssc/issuelist.htm and should allow you to visit the site. However, please pass along the error message to me. This will allow me to give the needed information about the resource to the appropriate ITS team member so it can be correctly linked to the proxy server.
Unfortunately there is not a similar workaround If you--or the patron your are assisting--are off campus. In that case please pass the error message along to me and I will contact ITS as soon as possible. During the week, it typically takes under 24 hours for ITS to add the resource to the proxy server.
I try to be as proactive as I can about preventing this error message from appearing, but I do miss things and electronic resources sometimes make changes that disrupt proxy settings without notification. So just let me know if the error message happens to come up and I'll work with ITS to get the resource added to the proxy server as quickly as possible.
To allow http://www.nsca-scj.org/pt/re/ssc/issuelist.htm to be used in a starting point URL, your EZproxy administrator must first authorize the hostname of this URL in the ezproxy.cfg file.
Within this database's section of ezproxy.cfg, the following line must be added:
Host www.nsca-scj.org
The EZproxy server must then be restarted to make the change take effect.
Links to our electronic resources on the website and in the catalog all link through the library's proxy server. This allows students, faculty and staff who are off campus to be able to log into our electronic resources. The above error message means that the journal or resource you are trying to access has not been properly "added" to the proxy server.
If you are on campus and see this message, simply delete the proxy server address (https://login.libproxy.noctrl.edu/login?url=) from the URL to visit the resource. In this case, https://login.libproxy.noctrl.edu/login?url=http://www.nsca-scj.org/
pt/re/ssc/issuelist.htm would become http://www.nsca-scj.org/pt/re/ssc/issuelist.htm and should allow you to visit the site. However, please pass along the error message to me. This will allow me to give the needed information about the resource to the appropriate ITS team member so it can be correctly linked to the proxy server.
Unfortunately there is not a similar workaround If you--or the patron your are assisting--are off campus. In that case please pass the error message along to me and I will contact ITS as soon as possible. During the week, it typically takes under 24 hours for ITS to add the resource to the proxy server.
I try to be as proactive as I can about preventing this error message from appearing, but I do miss things and electronic resources sometimes make changes that disrupt proxy settings without notification. So just let me know if the error message happens to come up and I'll work with ITS to get the resource added to the proxy server as quickly as possible.
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