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Australian unis on iTunes U

This report on ITWire gives some background on the involvement of six Australian universities in Apple’s iTunes U project, whereby academic course content is being provided free via iTunes.

The Aussie unis in this project are: Australian National University, Griffith University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Melbourne, the University of Western Australia and the University of New South Wales.

Other new participants include the Open University and University College London (UK), the University of Otago (New Zealand), and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland).

MIT and Yale started providing free recorded lectures and other content via Apple's iTunes U service a while back. To access the iTunes U channel go to the iTunes store and there it is.

It will be interesting to see how this develops and whether the quality of the content being made available, meets expectations.

Read more at the UNSW and Griffth uni websites

UNSW launches iTunes U channel

Griffith in tune

What sort of Web 2.0 training do library staff want?

In 2007 ECU Library offered the Learning 2.0 training to all library staff who wished to take it up. We did this by setting up 23 Things on our ECU Library Learning 2.0 blog and putting a small pilot group through the program in April/May 07. Then in the 2nd half of the year we offered the Learning 2.0 to all staff. By the end of the year over 20 of the 80 staff had completed the 23 Things. Another 20 had started their own blog, but had not completed the program.

We wanted to know why staff did not complete and what other ways we could provide training. We have now surveyed all staff to see what type of training they would prefer and what are the key technologies they were comfortable with. We've had a excellent response to our survey, so staff are interesting in this sort of training. One of the key impediments is, of course, finding time in our busy work lives to complete the training program.

The method of learning most favoured was a hands-on session or workshop, followed closely by a presentation or training day.

The Web 2.0 technology staff were most comfortable with was blogging. Staff were least comforable with wikis.

We hope to publish full details of our research later in 2008, in The Electronic Library.

JSTOR on Facebook

JSTOR is the popular, nonprofit digital archive of scholarly publications. The database has some content going back to the 17^th century but their development team are well up there with 21^st century technologies and are active on Facebook.

They have a Facebook page which has already attracted over 6,000 “fans”. If you become a fan you will be kept up to date with new JSTOR developments and have access to the JSTOR team. The page includes news, and links to new applications, tutorials and such like.

The JSTOR development team have developed a JSTOR search application for Facebook. This means you can search the JSTOR archive from within Facebook, once you download the Facebook app.

JSTOR is a subscription archive and not freely available. If you wish to access your university library’s subscription to the JSTOR archive from within Facebook you need to be either a student or staff. If off-campus you will need to be "savvy" and know how to add your library’s a "proxy server" settings to the URL. Then you will need to login and authenticate.

There's been some discussion on how useful having a database search application within Facebook really is. Especially if the resource is a subscription database such as JSTOR. There will be some who will find the mucking around with the URL worth it. From the librarian's point of view it does put your library's resources out there, where your users are.

Michael, Tame the Web, Stephens has an interesting post on university library Facebook applications , including JSTOR.

Some Australian library catalogue widgets

Some Australian university libraries have written code for catalogue widgets and gadgets. The widgets and gadgets can be loaded to a blog or an iGoogle page. You can find them by doing a search within iGoogle, then go to Add Stuff, Search for gadgets, then search for "libraries". I did find some Australian library catalogue widgets including Deakin and UWA. The other top spot to look for widgets is the Widget Box . See my previous post What are widgets for more info or widgets and gadgets.

What are Web Widgets?

RobinGood has 5 really great short videos on What are Web Widgets? Well worth a look via YouTube, even if you just see the first one, you will get a good idea of what widgets and gadgets are all about and why libraries should be taking notice. University libraries can provide widgets and gadgets as a way of placing content in areas outside the main library website. The library catalogue widget is one obvious example.

Unconferencing again in Perth in '08

You may have attended last year’s really successful Library 2.0 Unconference at the State Library of WA. This year the Unconference is again, organised by a band of enthusiastic volunteers. The events is FREE and the theme is Library 2.0 and beyond: getting our hands dirty. Don't miss it.

For full details see Kathryn Greenhill’s complete posting on Libraries Interact or check out the Unconference Wiki

DATE: Friday 22 August 2008
TIME: 9:30am - 5pm
VENUE: State Library of Western Australia
REGISTRATION: Opens 1 July 2008

You can subscribe to the RSS feed for changes to the Wiki and become involved by joining the Google Planning Group. Details of the 2007 Unconference are on the Wiki, so don’t get confused. The 2008 program will evolve in the usual Unconferencey way over the next wee while.