CJRLC's InfoLit Committee blog

Tech Challenge Blogs

2007-04-03T13:35:00.000-05:00

Many of the Tech Challenge participants have sent me the links to their blogs. They're great! Here's the list so far so you can see what everyone's been doing...

Alison Santos, Princeton PL: http://allisonslibrarymusings.blogspot.com
Brenna McLaughlin, Robertsville ES: http://robertsvillelibrary.blogspot.com
Connie Paul, CJRLC: http://cjrlc-connie.blogspot.com/
Ellen Davila, Ewing HS Library: http://ewinglibrarian.blogspot.com
Janice Painter, Princeton PL: http://pplacessserv.blogspot.com
Janie Hermann, Princeton PL: http://janieh.wordpress.com/
Karen Klapperstuck, Bradley Beach PL: http://librarykar.blogspot.com/
Elizabeth Burns, Ocean Co. Lib: http://yzocaet.blogspot.com
Susan Conlon, Princeton PL: http://librarygroove.blogspot.com/
Esther Camm and Pamela Dong, Ocean Co. College: http://occlibrary.blogspot.com
Priscilla Cordero, Ocean County Library: http://purledpouches.blogspot.com
Catherine Harper, Princeton PL: http://referencelibrarianofthefuture.blogspot.com/
Kristen Kirk, Ocean Co. Library: http://2ndgenlibrarian.blogspot.com/
Robert Lackie, Rider Univ.: http://www.librarygarden.blogspot.com/
Mona McNeill, Asbury Park HS: http://libraryjoy1.blogspot.com
Eleanor Marquis, Ocean Co. Library: http://eleanorblogs.wordpress.com
Linda Meuse, Hamilton PL: http://meusenotes.blogspot.com/
Ellen O'Brien: http://elnnj.livejournal.com/
Beth Willoughby, Red Bank MS: http://librarychallnge.blogspot.com/

Copy this!

2007-03-15T12:49:00.000-05:00

We had an excellent SchoolGroup open house at Frank Antonides School in West Long Branch, hosted by librarian Angel Somers with nearly 40 people!
Steve Garwood's presentation, "Plagiarism Prevention," was a sobering reminder of how prevalent--and accepted--plagiarism has become among students, and how hard it is to control. Steve talked about the importance of having a school-wide academic integrity policy that is publicized and enforced and ways to structure assignments to limit "opportunities" to plagiarize.
His Power Point presentation is on his website-- http://www.stevegarwood.com/classes/plagiarismprevention/ along with a handout with online and print resources. He also promised that the audio version of the presentation will be posted on his site as an MP3. I've already added some of the websites from his handout to the plagiarism portion of CJRLC's Help Pages http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listcopyrighhe.html
This all made me think about Tom Lehrer's old song about plagiarism, which contains the following:
"Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize...
Only be sure always to call it please, "research"."

16 people have signed up for the Tech Challenge

2007-02-16T10:23:00.000-05:00

I've been delighted at the positive reaction to this program--from the comments I've received, it sounds like many people welcome a gentle nudge to learn new things. There are resources to help you on our website--just click on "Tech Challenge" from our Home Page. We'll be adding more and welcome suggestions for additional links.
We've also scheduled workshops on blogging, Flickr, and RSS in March and April--watch your mail (both kinds) and check our Web site.
I came across an interesting article on new search engines that use Web 2.0 technology to do some interesting and unusual things--"Top 25 Web 2.0 Search Engines." You'll find it at http://oedb.org/library/features/top-25-web20-search-engines

Minutes of the January 23rd meeting

2007-02-06T15:53:00.000-05:00

Attendees: Amy Clarke (Brookdale CC), Joan Brady (Taylor Mills ES), Jean Curtin (Keansburg HS), Phyllis Anker (ret’d), Barbara Herbert (Georgian Ct. Univ.), Steve Chudnick (Brookdale CC), Rosalind Reisner (CJRLC)

Help Pages
Roz showed the group that she had added a section in Help for the Librarian on blogs and RSS. There are only a few links; more will be added as they are found. If any committee members know of good sites, please send them to her. Roz reported that a number of people have told her recently that they use and appreciate the information on the Help Pages. Roz received an email from someone requesting that we not link to the http://www.martinlutherking.org/ hate site in our section on evaluating websites. Linking to this site increases the number of “hits” and thus the site comes up as one of the first results in a Google search for ML King. The link has been removed.

InfoLit Committee blog
The blog was launched after the blogging workshops in November and there are several postings, but it’s not known if anyone has looked at it! Several suggestions were made about information to post on the blog, including a link to the Keys to the Age of Information presentation still on the CJRLC website and Phyllis’ Favorites blog. Several of the other CJRLC committees have created blogs: TechGroup, CJARL, and CJRLC has a blog as well.

CJRLC Tech Challenge
Roz distributed information on the Tech Challenge, which offers Region members the opportunity to learn several new things on their own or through our workshops by the Spring Membership meeting on May 24. Roz proposed that we use the InfoLit Committee blog as the place to post news and information about the challenge. This will also help publicize the blog. Jean Curtin’s suggestion for the next Tech Challenge: if you’re a school librarian, teach a teacher how to use EBSCOhost.

Action items:
1. Find out what people do with Phyllis’ Favorites
2. Put together links to websites that do a good job of helping people access the databases, to help libraries create or update their websites.
3. Get updated Info Literacy sites from committee members: check Brookdale’s website for links.

Do you need a push to learn new technology?

2007-01-25T11:22:00.000-05:00

Last August, at the August Executive Board retreat in Princeton, we talked about using new technologies to change the way we communicate with our members. We talked about blogs, wikis, RSS, virtual meetings, and other interesting things. The talking part was fun, and some of our members are already very tech savvy, but we felt strongly that we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to learn and try out these cool Web tools.

So, we're offering our CJRLC Technology Challenge--here's your chance to learn on your own or with our help and get rewarded for it! The flyer is going out in our February 1st mailing with all the details. It's already on our website http://www.cjrlc.org/Challenge/techchallenge.htm

If you complete the entire challenge by May 24th--our Spring membership meeting--you can come to the meeting and get a prize. If you complete any part of it, you'll be recognized at the meeting. If you've already done some of the pieces of the Challenge, well, then you're on your way. Call or email me to sign up (roz@cjrlc.org or 732 409-6484).

In the next few days, I'll be posting links on this blog to information that will help you learn on your own. We will also arrange more workshops to help you.

Good luck and we hope to give out lots of prizes on May 24th!

Census Report on Computer and Internet Use

2006-12-15T13:59:00.000-05:00

We had 2 Census workshops here a few weeks ago and the presenters handed out some interesting Census reports on different subjects. One that's been sitting on my desk is Computer and Internet Use in the U.S.: 2003. It's quite detailed about usage--by age group, type of task, location of the computer, demographics, socioeconomic data, etc.

One interesting statistic: in 1993, 32% of children had access to a computer at home. In 2003, the figure was 76%. An interesting trend reversal, is that more women than men now use the computer at home. Interesting to speculate why that's changed...

You can find read the report at: http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p23-208.pdf

Whither print journalism?

2006-12-07T10:29:00.000-05:00

Have you seen the video Epic 2015? It's a prediction about the future of communications and it's entertaining and scary at the same time. You can find it at www.robinsloan.com/ just click on Epic 2015 to see it. It's under 10 minutes long.

One thing the video talks about is the demise of print as a source for news. Along these lines, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have announced that they will switch to a smaller format--essentially dropping the width of one column. The WSJ will start January 2, 2007; The Times in 2008. Here's a link to the AP story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061203/ap_on_bi_ge/wall_street_journal_redesign

The law of unintended consequences...

2006-12-05T12:52:00.000-05:00

I received an email the other week asking if I would remove the link on our Help Pages to the Martin Luther King website that is the work of a hate group. We have this website posted along with other examples of bogus, spoof, or malicious websites for people to use as examples. The writer felt that linking to this website for any reason was a mistake. His reasoning was, that the more often a website is accessed, the greater its perceived popularity by search engines, and the more likely it will be to come up on the first page of results. Thus, we are inadvertently promoting this website. While I'm not sure that's strictly true, I did delete the site.

There was a link to the blog of the person who sent me this email. The blog posting about this problem was headed "Why do librarians hate Martin Luther King?" As you can imagine, I was very offended, especially since the posting did not explain the heading, but used it essentially as an attention-getter. My first thought was to fire off a comment, but I didn't--I'm not sure I want to communicate with this person. The offending post is at http://tuttlesvc.org What do you think?

2006-11-22T14:54:00.000-05:00

There's a great bibliography on blogging with links to articles on blogs in libraries--if you need information on how various libraries have used blogs, this is one place to find it. The author is Susan Herzog, and it's at: http://blog-bib.blogspot.com

Useful blogs for information literacy

2006-11-15T11:51:00.000-05:00

I'd like to expand the Links area with sites that are relevant to information literacy. If you have any suggestions for sites that you've found useful, use the Comments feature to send them to me and I'll add them.

Welcome to the InfoLit Committee's blog!

2006-11-15T10:41:00.000-05:00

Since this committee is concerned with how we access and use information, a blog is a great way for us to communicate.

I'll post any information that comes my way that seems relevant or useful--sites of interest, articles read, information from programs or conferences etc. Feel free to use the "comment" feature to share your thoughts.

If you'd like to share your ideas or information, you can email me and I'll post it, or, maybe, you'd like to help out and be a writer on this blog. Email me and let me know--roz@cjrlc.org