Thursday, May 31, 2012

Indexing Repository Content in Google Scholar


Presenter: Darcy Dapra, Partner Manager, Google Scholar
When: Tuesday, June 19, 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern
Register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/883942882

Have you ever wondered how Google Scholar connects researchers with information? As Darcy will explain, it’s not just about robots and algorithms; it's really about people and words. Google has created a powerful academic discovery tool by cultivating partnerships with the people who use it: the students, faculty, researchers, and writers who are looking for scholarly resources, and the publishers, librarians, and institutional repository administrators who provide them.

In this webinar, Darcy will show you how you can work with Google Scholar to increase visibility for your repository and connect scholars with the resources they’re looking for.

On the agenda:

  • How indexing in Google Scholar works
  • What types of content are included
  • What you can do to improve your content’s visibility in Google Scholar searches
Darcy will also discuss best practices for collecting metadata, explore some use cases, and respond to your questions.

This is a great opportunity to hear firsthand from one of the people who makes Google Scholar work for the academic community!

Embedded Librarians: What, Why, & How

Date/ Time: Tuesday, June 26, 2012
10:00 am – 12:00 noon EDT
Location: Online – Your desk or conference room.
Registration: $10 SCRLC members; $15 non-members; $25 Groups
Audience: This workshop is appropriate for all librarians and staff, especially those who work with distance learning students and remote library users. Academic and school library staff are encouraged to attend.
Tech Support: You will need –
•    An Internet-connected computer
•    Computer speakers or phone for sound
•    Computer projector if a group is ‘attending’
Funding: This training is funded in part by Federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds, awarded to the New York State Library by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
    
Embedded librarianship is a great way to reach distance and remote patrons and bring services and resources to them wherever they are.  But the term embedded librarian does not mean just one thing: it is an umbrella term that includes a number of service models and levels of activity.  What, exactly, are the service models, and how can a library choose and implement the best model to fit their needs?  This session will examine best practices for embedded librarianship by looking at several successful models and considering goals, design, and assessment of an embedded librarian program.

http://www.scrlc.org/EmbeddedLibrarians 

The Quest for Emotional Engagement: Information Visualization


Webinar on June 7
$20 for ASIS&T Members $40 for Non-Members


Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
Stephen Anderson, designer and creator of the Mental Notes card deck, believes that people must be emotionally engaged if you want them to exhibit a certain behavior. In this workshop, Stephen will share the process he uses to create simple visual representations to help people make informed choices and understand complex information.

In brief, design patterns such as spreadsheets, lists, dashboards and grid views suffice for getting data onto a screen. However, when it comes to making sense of this data, these same patterns hold us back from designing great experiences; generic patterns are poor substitutes for a good custom visualization, especially one designed for the content being displayed. Stephen will share with you many examples of such visualizations, and the process used to design each. Topics will include:
• How to design interactive models that make sense of complex information
• Basic graphic design skills that can be used by anyone (and how to avoid simply “dressing up data”)*
• The challenges of visualizing dynamic information, and how this differs from data visualizations and infographics
• How to use metaphor and story to make sense of complex information
• The neuroscience behind perception and judgement
• And much more!
Examples cover a variety of topic areas, such as: Health Insurance plans, medical charts, eCommerce search results, flight times, sales and CRM data, mobile phone bills, recipes, pirated movies, academic research, shopping lists and so on. In addition to the many numerous information visualization examples, most of which will be new to attendees, there will be multiple hands-on exercises where you will practice the skills being taught. Information is ripe for a makeover. This workshop will show you useful & engaging ways to present information.

* No graphic design skills are required!

Title:
The Quest for Emotional Engagement: Information Visualization
Date:
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Time:
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Friday, May 25, 2012

Library Services in the Cloud


An Infopeople online course, July 17, 2012 to August 13, 2012

Do you see the term "cloud computing" virtually everywhere but wonder what it means and whether it is something important for your library? Roy Tennant, well known for explaining technical topics simply and understandably, will lead you through an exploration of cloud computing starting with the basics and moving on to the implications for libraries. By the end of the course you will know:

•             The meaning of various cloud computing terms
•             The different types of cloud computing services, consumer and enterprise
•             Criteria for evaluating the various cloud computing services
•             Specific examples of how libraries are currently using cloud computing services

Fee: $75 for those in the California library community and Infopeople Partners, $150 for all others.

For a complete course description and to register go to http://infopeople.org/training/lib_services_cloud

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Putting Corporate Volunteers to Work!


The "Get Involved: Powered by Your Library" statewide volunteerism initiative is pleased to announce a free Webinar on June 6 at Noon.  Jennifer Bennett from VolunteerMatch will present on this topic:
Putting Corporate Volunteers to Work!
It can be challenging to engage corporate volunteers. Too often volunteer managers want to say yes, but struggle to find meaningful, interesting work for these volunteers to do. This workshop will present evaluation points to help volunteer managers determine if their program is ready to engage, or expand the use of corporate volunteers. Effective practices for engagement, ideas for diversifying the work and commitment level of corporate volunteer, the importance of creating opportunities with measurable impacts, and communicating those impacts will be discussed. Presenters will lead a discussion around the challenges and successes attendees have had engaging corporate volunteers.
So Save the Date!  A link to the webinar will be provided as we get closer . . . in the meantime, if you have questions about "Get Involved" (www.library.ca.gov/lds/getinvolved.html) or VolunteerMatch, please let me know how I can help . . . Carla

Carla Lehn
Library Development Services
California State Library
P.O. Box 942837
Sacramento  CA 94237-0001
Ph:  (916) 653-7743
FAX: (916) 653-8443
clehn@library.ca.gov

How to Facilitate Online Learning


The online course, "Teaching Online: Facilitating Online Learning", is designed for current and future teachers who wish to use technology to teach blended or fully online classes. The 3 week course, which starts on June 2, 2012, will be facilitated by Dr. Nellie Deutsch, Dr. Ludmila Smirnova, and Diethild Starkmeth. The 3 facilitate Moodle for Teachers (M4T) online workshops at Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning (IT4ALL) and practice relationships-based collaborative learning.


Course Objective
Participants will identify and describe online learning, facilitating online learning, and enabling attitudes to learning, and create student activities on a personal learning environment such as a blog, wiki, Moodle, Blackboard, Edmodo, Canvas, Course Sites, Ning and so on.

Course Layout (June 2-23, 2012)
Week 1: Online Teaching & Enabling Attitudes to Learning
Week 2: Setting Goals & Learning Outcomes
Week 3: Active Learning & Developing Artifacts

Course Format
  1. Webinars (see course layout/syllabus)
  2. Discussions (enroll for the discussions here )
  3. Course Tasks, Activities and Artifacts (Create or use personal learning environments such as blogs, wikis, e-portfolios, Mahara)

Certificates of Completion
Certificates of Completion are available for those who respond to the discussions and complete the tasks for the course.

Warm wishes,
The WizIQ Team