SPLAT - Special Projects Library Action Team

I found this news to be crushing--at first. I rely on Google Reader both at home for personal use and at work to keep up on all kinds of great content. Lifehacker says Feedly is the best replacement for Google Reader, but I found The Old Reader and I love it! Here's what the The Old Reader looks like:

You even get to see the creators and staff of The Old Reader (as of March 13, 2013) in this picture. They have a cool story, so be sure and read it on The Old Reader: behind the scenes blog.

So, I downloaded my stuff from Google Reader and uploaded the special file to The Old Reader. At this point, I was informed that that they got the file, but that there were 4,423 people ahead of me whose files needed to be uploaded first. I thought it was really nice that they let me know.

Pleased with how The Old Reader looked, I decided to just go ahead and subscribe to the blogs I follow myself (I can't handle more than 30 before I start to get overwhelmed, so this was easily accomplished in about 5 minutes). I just opened a tab for Google Reader and a tab for The Old Reader, clicked on the first one in Google Reader, copied the URL, pasted the URL in the "Add a Subscription" box at the top left-hand corner of The Older Reader, and so on, and was good to go.

The Old Reader looks fresh and pretty and has a great option to "Show unread only," which I really like. Anyway, I never would have looked for something else if Google hadn't announced they were shutting Google Reader down--and I would have missed out on my new favorite thing: The Old Reader!

Here's the link to check it out for yourself, if you haven't already done so.

I don't use a lot of social media (I won't bore you with all the reasons here),
but one of the sites I actually do love is Goodreads. Goodreads is a great site
for readers, helping participants keep track of what they read and to find
suggestions through other readers.

There are other book lover's cataloguing sites out there - Library Thing and Shelfari
being two of the most popular - but I have been using (and enjoying) Goodreads
for awhile. And, instead of writing a long page of pros and cons, I'm going to
be lazy and make a bulleted list for the highlights.*

Things to like as a Reader:

• It's completely free.

• You can be as active as you like. If you just want to keep a list of books, without
  rating or reviewing them, you can. At the other end of the spectrum, you can rate,
  review, send specific recommendations to friends, comment on friends' reviews,
  participate in live chats with authors, and even arrange for book swaps.

• They have an app, keeping you connected on virtually any device.

• The reviews actually mean something. You can get reviews from Amazon or
  B&N, but half the time, those reviews are more about the retailer (or the
  other reviewers). For the most part, reviews on Goodreads are useful when I'm
  trying to decide what to read.

• The recommendations engine is pretty decent. They take a look at your ratings
  in standard genres and will give you somewhat personalized suggestions. (And
  this part might get even better if they continue to work with the booklamp.org
  guys, who literally scan books for their DNA.)

• You can see what your friends are reading. And, sometimes snarkily (I'm sure
  that's a word) comment on their choices.

• They offer book giveaways, and authors have their own pages/blogs so that you
  can get first-hand information on what's new. There are also groups you can
  join who want to talk about books on specific topics.

• You don't feel as if you have to log in everyday! Or get sucked into the time-suck-warp (I'm looking at you, Pinterest).
  

• They have some interactive features like the never-ending book quiz, reading
  challenges, and the year-end best books voting activity. And you can ignore
  these features or go hog-wild.

• You can tie Goodreads into your Facebook or Twitter account.

Things to like as a Librarian:

• You can keep track of what I've read. You know the feeling - a patron approaches
  and asks you for a good book in a certain genre and you go completely blank.
  This way, you can quickly scan through your shelves for a good suggestion.

• Patrons can keep track of what they read. Anytime I see a patron with a
  notebook full of scraps of paper with book titles, I sweetly mention Goodreads.
  

• You can create a page for your Library. Last year, we used our Goodreads Group
  page for Summer Reading, where people could post their reviews instead of
  filling out a physical form. In the future, I want to experiment with doing a
  Book Club online. You can also post videos or create polls on your Group page.

• If you have NoveList or NoveList Plus, results are linked into Goodreads. And
  if you have NoveList Select, those Goodreads reviews can be linked to your
  catalog.

• Because authors are using Goodreads for promotion, you have even greater access
  to them - in fact, some will even chat via your Group page.

One caveat:

Like every other social media, there are people on Goodreads who probably
should follow the old adage of keeping quiet if they can't say something nice. Generally,
I think most people post appropriate, relevant, and/or constructive things, but
there are a few bullies out there. (And this goes for reviewers and authors!)

If you haven't joined, at least check it out. I can't promise you won't get drawn in, but at least you'll be doing
something you enjoy and might actually use at work. Find my info at
goodreads.com/jhills.

* I do realize that I probably will have written just as much in a bulleted list as I
would have in actual paragraphs, but this is one of those fibs I tell myself
when I need to get something done.

In my perusals and journeys through the library infosphere, Slideshare is a website that I have stumbled across multiple times. Basically, instead of presenting a PowerPoint and have your participants forget it in a couple of hours (unless they took notes or you just knocked them dead of course), you could just share the PowerPoint and have them look at it again and again.

While Slideshare's primary purpose is sharing presentations, it supports documents, PDFs, videos, and webinars. Slideshare allows you to easily embed a presentation on a blog or website, share on social media, or download a presentation that you found of particular interest.

The Zipcast feature allows you free, no-download web meetings, and Slidecast allows you to sync MP3 audio files with slides to create a webinar. Slideshare also boasts 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million monthly pageviews.

Although I haven't uploaded any presentations myself, I've glanced over the slides of multiple presentations that I wished I could have attended, and some places like ALA TechSource even have their webinar presentations archived on Slideshare. Needless to say, I get more and more excited the more I find out about Slideshare, and I'll definitely be uploading and browsing in the future.

I've written a couple of times in the last year about open source software because the VALNet consortium, the consortium my library district belongs to, began using the Koha open source ILS last April and because we at the Latah County Library District decided to start loading all of our new public computers with Libre Office instead of Microsoft Office.

Recently I started keeping an eye on a website run by Lyrasis, FOSS4LIB (at http://foss4lib.org), because I’m very interested in free and open source software.  Not just because it’s free, but also because of the whole community based idea behind open source software.

Anyway, FOSS4LIB is a great resource if you’re interested in finding free and open source solutions that may work in your library.  There is an index listing different types of software packages available and detailing what software packages are available in each of those areas.  There are open source options available for everything from discovery layers to OPACs, to ILSes to software to help you manage reservations for study rooms.

And if you’re unfamiliar with the possibilities Free and Open Source Software has for your library, you’re in luck.  FOSS4LIB is holding a series of webinars in January – April to help people learn about FOSS4LIB and what open source software can do for your library.

GHW

I don't have a  lot of bookmarks on any of the computers I normally use.  I just don't spend a lot of time surfing the net and when I do, I don't bookmark pages.  I figure that if I can get to drdemento.com, facebook.com, weather.com, and Google, well, what else do I need?  I figure that if I found it through a Google search once, I'll be able to find it by a Google search again if I really need it.  Four weeks ago I had less than 20 sites bookmarked on my computer at work, about 15 on my computer at home, and 4 on the laptop I'm typing this post on - and those 4 were the ones that came already bookmarked when I downloaded Firefox.

I never jumped on the Delicious bandwagon and the idea of tagging a bookmark is alien to me.  But I think I finally found a bookmark tool I like.

XMarks is a tool that you can download for Firefox or Chrome that allows you to synchronize your bookmarks from computer to computer.  By installing it on all 3 of the computers I just mentioned, I now have the same set of bookmarks synchronized on all 3 of those machines.  If I bookmark something at work, when I get home all I have to do is click on the XMarks button on the bottom of my Firefox browser and XMarks will make the bookmarks on this computer match the bookmarks on my other computers.

And XMarks also keeps my list of bookmarks stored online so that if I'm not using one of my normal computers, I can log in online and access my bookmarks from whichever computer I'm on.  I'm sure this will also come in handy the next time my computer at work crashes and has to be fixed too because XMarks will act as a backup for the bookmarks I synchronize.

XMarks also allows you to create profiles so that you can synchronize "personal" bookmarks only with computers for personal use and "work" bookmarks only with computers you use for work.  I would imagine that would be usefull for people like my brother who have lots of pornographic bookmarks that he wouldn't his boss to see on his work computer (if he actually had a job, that is).

I've been using XMarks for about a month now and I'm actually finding it quite useful to have the same set of 23 bookmarks on all 3 of the computers I normally use.

XMarks also has tools for sharing bookmarks, tagging bookmarks, synchronizing open windows, and synchronizing web history across different computers.  It's definitely a tool worth checking out.

GHW

About a week ago a friend of mine told me about Privacy Fix – a new add-on for Firefox and Chrome – that helps users identify holes in your privacy settings on your Facebook and Google accounts.  PrivacyFix can also help you see which websites are tracking you.

I downloaded it and liked how simple it is to go straight to the spots in my Facebook settings where I could fix problems I found.

Now I have this little square PrivacyFix “Healthbar” widget that sits in the upper right hand corner of my Firefox browser and turns colors if I go to a website that could potentially open up my private data to malevolent forces online.  It turns orange when I’m on a site where I should be cautious – the more orange it is, the more problems there are.  And I can click on this widget whenever I want and PrivacyFix will explain to me what the problems with the website might be.

It’s a pretty new add-on so many sites are not well indexed but PrivacyFix also has a crowd-sourcing add-on for Chrome users that allows anyone to review sites for PrivacyFix.

There is also a nice video from Techzilla that explains the basics of PrivacyFix at http://revision3.com/tzdaily/privacy-fix.

PrivacyFix can be found at http://www.privacyfix.com

GHW

The Ad*Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University. The advertisements are from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Check out all the neat ads here!  http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/

You know that time you asked yourself, "Did I create an account with this website?" Or, "Did I really delete my account, because that was vague." Or have you wondered lately what apps or websites have access to your personal data?  Well, I have, and I found these awesome sites for managing the security of your personal data and online presence.  

Knowem.com

Knowem? is a great website that will search across hundreds of websites by username to tell you if that username is available or taken.  If you use the same username, as many people do, this is a GREAT way to check websites, including social networking sites, that list the username in question.  Lots of us create accounts with that brand new, hot website, but forget about it when it cools down.  This is the place to go to find the accounts you've forgotten about.  It's also a great way to see what sites would have a username available, which is quick and dirty for identifying sites that you could use for library marketing.  

Account Killer

So now that you've made a list of websites you no longer use and want to delete the account, Account Killer will tell you exactly how to go about it.  Account Killer lists major sites' instructions for account deletion, and grades those account for ease of use.  Some websites will keep your information for whatever reason, and this site maintains a blacklist of websites you may not feel comfortable creating an account with.  And, for those blacklisted sites, it will tell you how to try to delete your accounts, even providing email addresses for personal requests.  This is a great place to check to see if you even want to create an account for yourself or for your library.  

Privacy Fix

Privacy Fix is a browser plugin that you run (and can install as a browser extension) which tells you what your privacy settings are for apps, Facebook, Google, and more.  This little goodie offers you a handy "fix" link for you to repair or delete access for these sites, and the browser extension will run and rate the privacy of websites you visit.  Privacy Fix also gives you a list of tracking cookies watching you RIGHT NOW.  

My Permissions

My Permissions is a browser plugin you install and run that tells you what apps have access to your data.  It's a pretty handy tool for seeing who monitors your stuff, and who things they ought to have access to your data.  Run the browser add on and easily remove apps you don't need that think they're entitled to snoop your info!  My Permissions also has a mobile app for keeping your smartphone clean.  

For the last month I've been playing around with an iPad from the SPLAT
Gizmo Garage.  Many of you who attended the ILA conference in Pocatello
saw members of SPLAT walking around with our various tablets and eReaders and
somehow I lucked out by getting the iPad.  I've been an Apple fan for many
years but couldn't ever justify spending the money on an iPad because I have a
newer MacBook Pro and an iPhone 4s.  However, using the iPad for the past
month has changed my mind, now I can't wait until I get my new iPad for
Christmas.

I know many people have seen or heard about the iPad and a good number of
you have probably played around with one.  The iPad is the current king of
the tablet world and a number of your patrons already have one (beware many
more will be coming in with them this holiday season).  The iPad, in its
various sizes, colors and capacities, is a versatile tool with many capacities
to fill voids in your professional and personal life that you didn't know
existed.  Listed below are a few of the
apps that I find most helpful my duties at the library, please leave comments
for apps that you find useful (and no, Angry Birds does not count as helpful).

For a little while now, I've wanted to know how to capture video from my
computer screen. If you click the "Print Screen" button on your PC, you
can get a picture of your screen and then paste it into a program. But,
I've seen several companies make tutorials and introductions while
recording what they are doing on their computer screen. I wanted to figure out
how to do that.

So, I asked some of my colleagues and they mentioned Camtasia.
This software allows you to capture video from your computer screen,
and then edit it inside Camtasia. The only problem is that you have to
purchase this software. The good news is that there is a free trial available from the website.

But, there is even better news. The same people that make Camtasia also offer Jing.
Jing only allows you to create 5 minute videos, but it is absolutely
free =D. The website does want you to make an account, and sign up for
the newsletter from TechSmith,
the creators. But the software works really well, allows you to capture
videos and photos, and then it gives you a link to share with others.
Here's a quick video I created, that shows you what it looks like and what it does.