Carnival of the Infosciences #78 has been posted

The latest installment of the Carnival of the Infosciences has now been posted over at DIYLibrarian. This is a great summary of some of the key posts in the biblioblosphere from the past couple of weeks.

New course: Social Networking Tools: Hands on Learning (Aug. 9/07)

I am very excited to announce a new continuing ed course I will be teaching at the Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto:

Social Networking Tools: Hands on Learning

Web 2.0, Facebook, Second Life - have taken the world and the library by storm! Explore these social media networking tools in this hands-on computer lab class. Set up a blog and wiki, view RSS feeds in an aggregator, try a social bookmarking site such as del.icio.us, and create a profile on professional networking site LinkedIn. Look at Flickr, LibraryThing, Ning, Facebook, MySpace and Second Life. Test out the latest apps such as Twitter and Jaiku. We will try some of these and have a "tour" of others, as well as discuss the implications for libraries.

Specific learning outcomes for students

At the end of the course, participants will:

* be able to set up a blog using Blogger or Wordpress
* be able to set up a wiki using PB Wiki
* set up some RSS feeds in a web-based aggregator such as Google Reader or Bloglines
* set up a profile on business networking site LinkedIn
* try using a web-based social bookmarking site such as del.icio.us or equivalent
* become familiar with Ning, Twitter, Jaiku, Flickr, LibraryThing , MySpace, Facebook and Second Life either through hands-on use or a live "tour" given to the class, depending upon time
* become familiar with how these are being used by libraries and library staff

Key topics covered

* who in society is using these applications?
* how are they being used by libraries and library staff?
* what are both the positive and negative aspects to these technologies?
* using social networking applications inside the firewall
* issues surrounding communication in public spaces
* what is Library 2.0 compared to Web 2.0
* how to learn more
* how to stay current in this area

Target Audience:
Library technicians, librarians, library managers and directors as well as others interested in Web 2.0.

When: Thursday, August 9, 2007, 9 am - 5 pm
Where: Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto
Register

Thanks go to Rebecca Jones who shared the original concept with me (and I just had to jump on the opportunity), and to Eva Kupidura for working with me to set this up and who keeps things running smoothly at the PLC.

This will be my very first time attempting this feat, and you won't want to miss it!! Sign up now since spaces will be limited to the number of computers in the room.

New CALL SIG Knowledge Management Blog

I've been keeping a low profile lately, trying to get away on my "big vacation". Alas, that has largely fallen through. I'm still taking a break for a couple of weeks but may take advantage of this time off to catch up on a few things including my blogging.

First off, I congratulate Wendy Reynolds and Linda Matte, chairs of the Knowledge Management Special Interest Group (KM SIG), part of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL), for kicking off a new blog called KM Librarians! As part of this SIG, I can't wait to contribute my bit. If you are a member of CALL and would like to contribute to the blog, please contact Wendy or Linda.

Thanks to Simon Fodden on SLAW for linking to it.

Blogging at Computers in Libraries

I'm now settled into the conference hotel, ready for Computers in Libraries to start tomorrow. I spent the last two days with Sabrina Pacifici preparing our workshops for Thursday, a new one on blogging for the enterprise, and one that Sabrina runs annually on mining blogs and RSS for research purposes.

I've now had a look at the list of people planning to blog the conference, and it is quite impressive! For anyone not here, it will be a well-covered conference. My only regret was deciding not to bring my new microphone, so I won't be recording people. Too bad, because it would have been a great opportunity with all these interesting people here.

Lots of ideas for future projects are already flying around. I may have to take a sabbatical from my usual job to get all these extra projects done! Heh.

Anyway, if you are here as well please do say hello. :-)

Cheers,
Connie

Winners of Connie Crosby's Big Fat 3rd Blog Anniversary Draw

Thanks to everyone who took part in the little survey in honour of my 3rd blog anniversary!! Everyone who responded is a regular reader, with the exception of one person who described him/herself as someone who reads frequently but not regularly. You all left wonderful comments. I also asked about my portrait photo on this blog, whether it should be changed. 3 of you said to keep it since "it is a classic" (those were my words), 2 of you said it is time to change it, and everyone else said it is up to me. So, I'm not going to go out of my way to have a photo taken just YET, but if I happen to walk in front of a camera, you may see a change sometime in the future..... heh.

Okay, now without further ado! Three winners of NE2007 swag from the yet-to-be-created Cafe Press store were selected randomly from the 18 people who gave me email addresses in the survey (there were more who responded to the survey). Each of the 18 were numbered, and I had Wendy Reynolds pick three numbers in the 1 to 18 range. She could not see the list of email addresses. Each of the winners was sent an email message from me notifying of the win and requesting permission to post their names to this blog.

And the winners are:

• Kathryn Bennett
• Steve Matthews
• and ???

Yes, the third person has not yet responded!! And, because I don't have the name of the person (although I have my suspicions who you are), I cannot hunt you down via your work address. If you left your gmail account address, please check to see if there is a message to you from Connieblog! If I don't hear from you tomorrow I will try sending the message again. I'm hoping it didn't get stuck in your spam filter. I will keep trying!

Anyway, congratulations Kathryn and Steve. And thanks to everyone who took part in the draw!!! I appreciate all of your support in this little blogging endeavour of mine, and am thrilled that you are reading along with me. You have made this little milestone very special.

Cheers,
Connie

New Law Librarian Blog: All-Purpose Biblioblawg

I welcome Meg Kribble to the law librarian blogger community! This is part of a fantastic note I received from Meg today:

I wanted to let you know that I’ve started a blog, and I’ve included yours in my blogroll as one of my favorites. My introductory post is here:

http://biblioblawg.blogspot.com/2007/03/introduction.html

I realize that because of the subject matter, not all of you will be interested in reading regularly, but I still wanted to take a moment to introduce myself, and to say thank you with a bit more personalization than is possible with “blogs that link here.”

Thank you, and keep on blogging!

Regards,
Meg

I am honoured to be on Meg's original blogroll. Moreover, I would encourage you to have a look. She is just getting started but I'm sure she will be great!

Carnival of the Infosciences #67

Welcome to the Hangover Edition of the Carnival of the Infosciences! It was a slow week for the Carnival, no doubt because of a combined effect of Spring break, the early North American time change, and St. Patrick's Day celebrations (commemorated over at the Vincent G. Rinn Law Library blog) . We had only one submission for Carnival #67, so I am afraid you will now be subjected primarily to picks from my blogroll and maybe even some personal promotion. I'll try not to shout.


St. Patrick's day parade originally uploaded to Flickr by chidorian.


Superstar submitter Chris Zammarelli kindly submitted this post by cindiann from Chronicles of Bean: Library Agitprop . It riffs on this post by Karen Schneider at ALA TechSource: Dear Library of Congress... and takes a good, long, look at what we are doing with Library 2.0. Thank you for a fantastic submission, Chris!

Top on my list is those who have just concluded taking part in Five Weeks to a Social Library, the ground-breaking web-based course put on by the biblio glitterati:

• Meredith Farkas, Chair
• Michelle Boule
• Karen Coombs
• Amanda Etches-Johnson
• Ellyssa Kroski
• Dorothea Salo
  

I was going to list individual blog posts, but I suggest you just go over and explore the whole website, including blogs, wiki and course content. Meredith Farkas has also been blogging the experience over at Information Wants to be Free. And congratulations to Amanda Etches-Johnson for just being named one of LibraryJournal.com's Movers and Shakers of 2007!!

Turning my sights to the other side of the globe, CW at Ruminations based in Perth, Australia, discusses her trip to Margaret River to meet with a number of viticulture (wine-making) students and academic staff and provide them with some information literacy seminars and EndNote training. She talked about the trip beforehand, her plans to use Twitter to communicate with the biblioblogosphere while she was on the trip and away from blog access, and then summarized the experience in What we did in Margaret River.

One of my favourite law library bloggers, Michel-Adrien Sheppard who works at the Supreme Court of Canada and blogs at Library Boy, celebrated International Women's Day with a list of Feminist Legal Theory Resources. Michel-Adrien always picks up on the best of Canadian and international legal information.

At the cooperative group blog Out of the Jungle, Betsy McKenzie celebrated International Women's Day by taking part in Blog Against Sexism Day with a post called Letter to My Daughter. It is a touching read.

Also at Out of the Jungle, Marie S. Newman responds to a New York Times article about digitization, whether anything not digitized will be forgotten in the future, in Digitizing History.

Over at the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, my west coast counterpart Steve Matthews created a fantastic summary called Biggest Hurdles for Law Firm RSS Adoption just before heading off to Disney.

Scott Vine, at Information Overlord based out of the UK, has shared with us his secrets for finding music in places other than iTunes: Let the Music Play On...

Since we last met, the lo-fi librarian celebrated a first blog anniversary. Happy blogaversary, lo-fi!! Keep on blogging! And check it out--each week lo-fi puts together a list of This Week's Latest Tools - March 18th list and March 11th list.

Which reminds me, Jim Milles is currently teaching a class on how to teach legal research, and he has been blogging and podcasting the content of the course over at TLR07. The students are learning how to incorporate new technology into their teaching. I strongly recommend having a look if you are involved in adult education.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the new cooperative blog we have created for the Northeast Regional Law Libraries Conference, librarieswithoutborders.wordpress.com . Wendy Reynolds has written a fantastic post called Pushing the borders of the profession . I hope you will have a look. (Okay, that is the blatant self-promotion part. I hope it wasn't too loud and painful!).

Everyone! Show the love and submit your blog article picks to the next edition of Carnival of the Infosciences using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival wiki page. Our next host, on April 2, 2007 will be Grumpator (just missed April Fool's by one day!).

Cheers,
Connie

Call for Carnival Submissions - due this Sunday!

I'm a bit late posting this reminder: I am putting together this week's Carnival of the Infosciences. Please get your submissions in by tomorrow night latest! I've only received one submission so far so I really need to hear about what good things have happened in the biblioblogosphere in the past two weeks. Bring me the best and the brightest!

Details here on my previous post.


Cheers,
Connie