Saturday, August 2, 2008

Cool Tools - Mashup the Library Demos

It has become a tradition at the annual CARL North IT workshop to end the already information-packed day with a few short "cool tools" demonstrations. Here are the three demos for the 2008 workshop, Mashup the Library: An introduction to mashup technology and the art of remixing library and information resources:

#1: “Bookshelf Visualization"
“Virtual Shelf” is a student project created for the Open Library Project of Internet Archive. UC Berkeley Information School graduate students Devin Blong and Jonathan Breithart presented [see photo]. Several members of the audience wondered aloud -- will we see these two bright, young students someday as famous high tech, high profile stars? UC Berkeley's iSchool must be a facinating place to learn and grow.

#2: “Google Visualization Tools for Numeric Data
Harrison Dekker of UC Berkeley, Coordinator of Data Services, Doe/Moffitt Libraries, introduced us to some wonderful data tools. Exploring these will keep me busy!
See http://spreadsheets.google.com/ for Google analytics.
Spreadsheet widgets – SF weather, stats, housing, population, % subprime loans
“Add a gadget” is a motion chart.
Check out Google Finance
iGoogle – put your widgets there.
Google Charts. See http://chart.aps.google.com/

#3: LibGuides
Laura Moody, Librarian, San Francisco State University ended the workshop with a demonstration of LibGuides for the J. Paul Leonard Library, which shares library information and bring together several Web 2.0 applications into the research guide environment. The system helps librarians publish and share information online, while highlighting and promoting library resources and services to the community. Check it out. See how other libraries are using it.

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