reply | Chris Aldrich

Reply to Library Shop Classes | The Sheridan Libraries Blog

Replied to Library Shop Classes by Robin Sinn (The Sheridan Libraries Blog)

Library shop classes? Of course!

The Sheridan Libraries offers many tools to help you with your library research. While you can always stop at the Reference Consultation Office on M Level, use our Ask a Librarian service, or contact your liaison librarian with any questions you may have, we also offer workshops about specific tools. These tools include databases and citation management programs.

Below is a list of our Fall Workshops, with links for registration.

Refworks 2.0 Workshops
Tues., Sept. 20, 2011, 11:00-12:00 Wed., Sept. 21, 2011, 4:00-5:00 One class can help trim hours off your time spent researching and writing. Come learn the secrets of organized citations and easy, quick bibliographies.

Citation and Organization Tools
Wed., Sept. 28, 2011, 2:00-3:00 Wondering what tools can help keep you and your papers organized? We provide a comparison and overview of several popular tools. RefWorks, Mendeley, Zotero, and Papers will be included.

Scopus and Web of Science
Wed., Sept. 28, 2011, 4:30-5:30 Help your research and save your time: learn to use these two powerful tools in the most effective ways. Feel free to bring topics that we can use as search examples!

Making the Best of Google
Tues., Oct. 4, 2011, 4:00-5:00 You seek. But do you find? Join us for a tour of Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books. Learn how they really work and how to make the best use of each.

E-Books for Academics
Wed., Oct. 5, 2011, 4:30-5:30 We love reading our fun fiction on our mobile devices, but the JHU libraries have 1 million academic e-books as well. Bring your e-readers, tablets, and any mobile device that you use to read books. Find out which e-books can/can't be downloaded directly to your e-device, and practice while the librarians are there to help.

Copyright and Fair Use
Wed., Oct. 12, 2011, 10:30-11:30 With the increasing use of images, music, and other kinds of audio-visual resources as well as the delivery of course content through online course management systems like Blackboard, scholars and academic institutions are facing challenges as to what constitutes fair use and what does not. Therefore, the aim of this workshop is to create awareness about some of the challenges related to copyright and provide an electronic toolkit for the participants.

History Detectives: The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition
Wed., Oct. 12, 2011, 6:00-7:00 Want to impress your friends and professors alike with research skills that would surpass those of Sherlock Holmes? Detective-Librarians Chella and Heidi will lead you on a madcap journey through Victorian London as we discover the secrets of the Crystal Palace. Gumshoes will have the opportunity to put together their own case files explaining the who, what, when, where, and whys of the Crystal Palace!

PubMed
Wed., Oct. 26, 2011, 5:00-6:00 Great tips for using the tools within PubMed that will help you find exactly what you want, much more quickly. You'll be able to practice online, too, while the librarians are there to help!

I hope that some discusses LibX in some of these presentations. It’s my favorite new research tool!

Reply to Mythbusters | The Sheridan Libraries Blog

Replied to Mythbusters by Margaret Burri (The Sheridan Libraries Blog)

Ever walk past a campus tour and wonder how much of it is true? While most of it is, and we love the plug for “your own librarian,” there are a couple of long-standing inaccuracies that we’d like to put to rest:

“No building on campus can be taller than Gilman Hall because that’s what’s in Gilman’s will.” Wrong. Decisions about buildings’ heights, including that of the library, have been made based on the scale of the campus and the architecture of Homewood House. Stand at the middle of the lower part of the beach, and look through the glass windows of MSEL. Notice anything? That’s right–Gilman Hall is beautifully framed in the center.

Gilman died in 1908, and mentioned nothing in his will about buildings. In 1912, the Trustees began to plan a new “Academic Building.” This was completed in 1915, and formally named after Gilman in 1917.

“The library sank three inches when they put the 2.5 million books in it in 1964.” Wrong again. I often wonder how many parents, when they hear this, would like to end the tour right there. First, there weren’t 2.5 million books in 1964; we didn’t reach that milestone until the 1990s. When the new library opened on November 15, 1964, there were just over 1.1 million books on the shelves.

Second, no sinking occurred. The weight of the thousands of shelves and books had been calculated into the plan, and the foundation was, and remains, more than adequate to hold the weight.

One thing that is true about the library is that when the hole was dug, an underground stream was discovered, and had to be rerouted before work on the building could continue. John Berthel, the library director at the time, poses in the recently dug hole with some of the books that would later grace the shelves.

Did Winston go down into the new hole for the BLC while they were digging and take a similar photo with a pile of books? The two photos would make great “book ends!”

Twitter Changes Rules on Users. No Auto-Follow. | Kyle Lacy

Replied to Twitter Changes Rules on Users. No Auto-Follow. by Kyle Lacy (kylelacy.com)

(hat tip to ZDNEt and Chris McEvoy for the lead) From ZDNet: “With no notice, Twitter yesterday “pulled the rug out from under its developers” one developer says, by discouraging auto-following and imposing 1,000 person-per-day following limits.” Now… this is not news to me because of the “pulling the rug out from under its developers” thing or the 1,000 person-per-day following limit… The news to me as a Twitter user… I don’t really remember getting a message or alert that the new limits were going to be enacted. I use Twitter on a daily basis. It seems fairly odd that I would not know about the change.

I’m personally glad they’d be implementing something like this and wish they had done it about a month ago. Eventually without any controls the site would have become a waste land. In the spirit of using it as the tool it has become, they needed to implement changes like this as the site scaled up to more and more people. It’s very similar to the changes they instituted in the fall of 2008 when they created a cap of being able to follow more than 2000 people when your own number of followers wasn’t commensurate with that number. As a game theorist, I’m sure that people will somehow find some other way to artificially game the system.

As a separate note, who really wants to waste the time building thousands and thousands of followers when none of them are really going to ever pay attention to you? Yes, it’s great to have a high number, but really what is your ultimate reach? How many people are you engaging?