This set of spreadsheets contains data from scheduled SFX queries for FY 2007/2008. This post will be updated as new data is added to the spreadsheets.
Download reqclicktotals0708.xls
Download SourceUse0708.xls
Download TitlesByTarget0708.xls
Download TopJournals0708.xls
Download TopTargets0708.xls
Confused by the "No Title" entry in TopJournals0708.xls? Discover the reason for "No Title" here.
There's a new, simple way to get documents created by a word processing application (like Microsoft Word) posted to one of our blogs on TypePad, without the usual formatting nightmares or cut and paste headaches. All you need is a Google account and access to Google Docs, and the steps outlined below.
If you're a multiple-blog author, just edit the settings to change to a different blog before you publish. Another neat thing you can do is edit a document you've already posted to blog from inside Google Docs. Then, when you go to the Publish tab, one of your options will be to re-publish the previous post with the new document - handy for fixing typos or updating information! The only flaw I've found so far is that it seems reluctant to assign a title to your post based on your document's name - you may need to login to Typepad and assign a title to your post, but that's a small price to pay for the convenience of directly publishing documents you've already created.
I removed the key matches (about ten) from the Libraries' interface for the search appliance today that pointed to the e-journals page. There were about a dozen or so of these, which would toss up a link to a category on the e-journals site when a given subject word matched, e.g.- literature or accounting. They ceased working properly a while back when we went to the new version of the A-Z list, which I just noticed and no one had reported. I don't think these links will be all that missed, and I'm convinced there's a better way to do this which I'll explore if demand for the links ever resurfaces.
In their place, I added two key matches (for journal and journals) that link to the main page of the A-Z list.
Big oscar is a subdomain at AOL, specifically:
http://big.oscar.aol.com/
We make use of a small service offered by AOL, namely, the ability to toggle images for our chat application based on the status of our AOL login. When a page loads that uses this functionality, such as:
http://www.lib.k-state.edu/reference/vref/
or any of our catalog search pages where one finds a Meebo chat widget (or, more accurately, a picture of one), before the image of the chat widget loads, a little query goes out to big oscar, who either says, yes, the library account is logged in, in which case the "click to chat with a librarian" image loads, or no, which loads the "no one available" image. This is completely benign, and in no way poses a security risk.
Why bring this up? If a person uses Internet Explorer and cranks their security settings way up high, IE will flash a warning when this query gets sent to big oscar. Personally, I don't want to use a browser that's such a namby pamby about this kind of stuff (which is why I use Firefox, which applies a lot of common sense security fixes without being so annoying), but some people have been burned or otherwise convinced they need ultra-high security on their machine. Not much we can do there other than tell them to allow it.
Back in October, I was headed to Victoria, BC for Access 2007 and had a layover in Seattle. Alas, as with most major airports, they wanted some heinous sum for wireless access. While killing time, and somehow not in the mood to read anymore, I thought, hey, let's see what ports and protocols they block. Turns out that as a commercial service, anything fun was blocked, but I was able to use boring command line commands like ping and tracert.
I sat there for the better part of an hour firing off tracert commands, and found some interesting stuff, well, not really interesting, that's an overstatement. The question on my mind was whether A Small Orange's slow response times (from the K-State campus) are their fault, or the grid's fault. Well, as you can see in this oh-so-cryptic document , it's a function of hops that lie beyond their control. From Seattle, A Small Orange was 'closer' (i.e.- faster) than K-State's network. It's likely because the airport uses AT&T's services, as does small orange, so there's not much buck passing between Seattle and Atlanta. With K-State, you see it smack up against Cox and kanren routers that play a little tennis with the packet before sending it on to its destination.
We're talking milliseconds here, of course, and I'm the furthest thing from an expert on WANs. I understand tracert to some degree, however, and the number of hops, and the lag time at a hop, means any data going back and forth is subjected to the tennis games that go on.
Yes, I'm a dork.
A while back, I was advocating the use of Streetprint to put up some digital collections. After a discussion about the best way to proceed with such projects, it was set aside and in the meantime dozens of other topics and projects have arisen and occupied our time.
Last Friday, I had occasion to install and test Streetprint while working on a preconference for the upcoming Kansas Library Association conference. Jamene and I are doing a session on DIY social libraries for those with zero budget, aka small public and academic libraries. We were reviewing tools and weighing their worth in terms of the preconference, i.e.- would it be worth showing an install and how to get started. With an application like WordPress, the answer is obviously yes. It installs in seconds and is robust and usable without much fussing around.
Streetprint is a different story. The idea behind Streetprint was to create a software package usable by people in the humanities with minimal technical ability. As such, it has to default to a lowest common denominator in terms of security. It actually leaves much of the application with permissions set to 666 and 777. If you know what that means, you'll know why we dropped the application from the list we'll be showing. Repairing the security would be a major headache, and given that we're trying to show people how easy this can be, Streetprint just doesn't cut the mustard. That makes me sad, since the idea behind it is wonderful. I noted that it's had no version activity since 2006, so I suspect it's an orphaned project at this point.
For those of you who missed the January All Staff - a new addition to the All Staff meeting agenda was discussed. From this month on, every month, there will be a 5 minute slot to do the Lightning talks.
What is a Lightning talk ?
Wikipedia defines it as "a short presentation given at a conference
or similar forum. Unlike other presentations, lightning talks last only
a few minutes..". Generally these are for 5 minutes or less and follow the theme of the conference. But in our case, content is pretty open.
What will be covered?
In this age of information overload, there are some tools that can help us manage this abundance of information. Be it online bookmarking tool (del.icio.us),
feed readers or google portal, a combination of these freely available
tools can help everyone in some way. Some teams within our Library are already using google docs, delicious, etc in creative ways. Wouldn't it be nice to hear from them on how they are using these latest tools ?
In addition, the 2.0 paradigm has redefined innovation. New tools are cropping up faster than any one person can blog about them leave alone use them. It would be great to have a collective pool of people identifying them, trying out and sharing them with others. You don't have to be a techie to try these tools.
Why All Staff & why only 5 minutes?
The best place to catch majority of our colleagues is the All Staff meeting. With these new tools, if we cannot give someone a reason enough to use it within the first 5 minutes of introducing the tool, then they either wont use it or they don't need it. Also, if there is enough interest in any one particular tool, we can always follow-up with a focused training session later.
Now what?
If you are excited about sharing your new found wisdom in 2.0 era, then volunteer to lead a 5 minute talk at an All Staff meeting. Or if you want to hear about a tool you heard from someone & are interested in knowing more, then suggest a topic. Just drop me a mail (harish) either way with "lightning talk" in the subject.
Do you find yourself wondering what we accomplished during Wish Week 2007? Well, look no further. All of your updates are here!
Completed projects:
In-Progress projects:
A while back, we edited the settings of our Webserver to redirect all variants of our main domain to www.lib.ksu.edu. As of yesterday, we will now be using www.lib.k-state.edu as our canonical domain. As with the last change, all variants (ksu or k-state, with or without the www) will continue to work in perpetuity, so no documents need to be edited, nor does this change really impact much of anything other than the address in the browser address bar.
This was done to bring us into line with a proposal I wrote for the campus, suggesting that however one may feel about ksu contra k-state, it is time for our Webservers to declare a unified canonical domain so that our content is properly indexed and ranked by major search engines. Having access to a Google Search Appliance has opened my eyes to the chaos that serving inconsistently via two domains can create for a search engine, which can only hurt K-State and its findability. I proposed a simple change to a Webserver's configuration that will allow all of the variants to work indefinitely. The proposal was reviewed and deemed worthy by both the Faculty Senate Committee on Technology and Associate Vice Provost James Lyall. Adoption is entirely voluntary, of course, but it can only help a site's search engine rankings and findability.
Another wish completed! If you're interested in adding events hosted by the Libraries to the Hale Library Hours Calendar to get a little more publicity for them, it's now a piece of cake. Check out the documentation here.
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