Open Access Week 2010

Visit Open Access Week

Open Access Week is on next week: October 18-24 2010. It's a global event, now in its 4th year and it is promoting open access as a new norm in scholarship and research.

The themes are: Learn Share Advance

There are many activities happening in Europe and North America, all listed at http://openaccessweek.org and follow the Twitter tag #oaw2010.

There's even some OAW haiku my favourite is:

It's the online age
You're losing research impact...
Make it free online

From what I can see the awareness in Australia seems to be pretty negligible. But well done to Deakin University for an interesting program of seminars.

Week 2 October show and tell

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

I decided to stick with Animoto to make a promotional video for Open Access Week, which is coming up 18-24th October 2010.

What have a I learned? Well, this time I spent more time on arranging the images and text in some coherent sequence. The images I've used should be a bit larger to get a better resolution. Selecting images and music takes an inordinate amount of time, I find. And, don't copy the embed code into Notepad, but take it straight from the Animoto website.

I think the text function that Animoto includes could make this a useful tool for library promotional type videos.

Week one of October show and tell

RestructureGirl has a wrap up of week one with links to all the learning activities. Animoto has been a hit, but there are many more approached to vblogging to try out.

http://restructuregirl.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/octshowntell/

October Show and Tell challenge

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

There's a challenge on again from a group of librarians on Twitter. The October challenge is to explore digital story telling and video blogging — for more info in Restructuregirl’s blog post.

Here's my entry for week one. I decided to do Animoto as we had a presentation on that at our staff Library 2.0 day in July and it looked interesting. Then I saw an Animoto video done by BonitoClub which was a picture tour through Japan using some Flickr photos and Animoto.

So this is my first attempt using some of my bird photos taken in Australia and Bali. You need between 12 and 16 photos for this short video and you can pick the music from Animoto's selection.

Animoto allows you to make a short 30 second video with their free Animoto account. Anything more costs you only $30+ something a year. You can embed the code in your blog, as done here, or share it on Twitter, Facebook, etc. I haven't done any editing to this, but will play around more with Animoto maybe for next week's challenge.

It's on again - Perth Library Camp (AKA Perth Unconference)

Once again there is going to be a library Unconference (Library Camp) in Perth. It will be held at the Grove Library on October 25th 2010 from 9.30 to 4.30.

The registration for library Unconference 2010 is now open.

To register just go to http://www.librarycampperth.com and add your name to the list.

Please be quick these things usually fill up fast.

If you have something you'd like to see a session on, even if you don't want to do the session yourself, please add it to the sessions ideas page.

The Twitter hashtag for the day is: #lcp2010

Delving into military history and a sad story of two brothers

I stumbled across this sad story of two brothers, killed in action on the same day during the Australian North African campaign of World War Two.

Recently I attended an excellent family photo workshop at Wanneroo Public Library run by Julie Martin. I brought along some family photos taken by my uncle. They are a collection of photos of the Australian 9th Division during the North African campaign of World War Two. Julie was interested in the collection and also commented on the photo shown here that my uncle took in 1942. The photo is of the grave of two men with the same surname.

Thanks to all the online records available on the Australian Army World War Two Nominal Roll and the Australian War Memorial, I have been able to do some detective work and have pieced together a story that is more local than I expected. My uncle was from N.S.W., but the grave photo is of two Western Australian brothers. These two brothers were killed in action on the same day: 23 October 1942. The names are visible if you enlarge the photos, so I have been able to track down some records.

They were both Gunners in the 2/7 FD REGT RAA, so were probably killed during the battle of El Alamein. 23 October 1942 was the first day of the battle of El Alamein. The Allied victory at El Alamein was a critical turning point for the Allies in the North African campaign and for World War Two generally.

I just came across this photo, pieced together a likely story, but I have no experience in military history, so I am contacting a journalist to see if they wish to write up this story. Obviously effort would have to be made to contact possible relatives who may be out there. The terrible impact of this on the family can barely be imagined.

This photo is precious to me so please don’t use it without my permission. Thanks!

Our students take to web scale discovery

Library OneSearch

Earlier this year we did a usability study of our new web scale discovery product, Summon.This is a very brief presentation I did on the study's findings during ECU Research Week in August 2010.

The full paper detailing all the findings, has been submitted by Lutie Sheridan and I and is expected to be published by Emerald Publishing later in 2010

View more presentations from Julia Gross.