 | Content associated with the teaching activities of Candy Schwartz, Professor at the Graduate School of Library & Information Science, Simmons College. |
« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 »
Today's music is Lunasa, IMHO the best irish band currently playing. They've been at it for over a decade, and I have seen them many times (almost a groupie). This particular album is my favourite, it's just called Lunasa, and I especially love the low whistle duet/trio playing on the fourth cut, "Aibreann". I will be seeing Lunasa tomorrow (Friday) at the Somerville Theater - row C, seat 7.
For the past 3 days I have been chanting to myself "make dropbox for Assignment 1, make dropbox for Assignment 1". Of course, chanting this while in bed or on the way to work doesn't help at all. It took an e-mail from a student to remind me. So - there is now a dropbox for Assignment 1. Apoplogies.
Does anybody out there know a used CD store would welcome old LPs? I don't want to sell them - I just don't want to dump them in the garbage. Mostly 60s-70s rock, some bluegrass, jazz, and classical.
I am reminded that there is an excellent overview of metadata to be found in a special issue of Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, volume 40, numbers 3/4. This is a Haworth journal, and you will find full text access to Haworth in the GSLIS pulldown list of e-resources.
I added two PPT handouts to Moodle for Friday (for both I did 6-to-a-page and 3-to-a-page - I will try to remember to do this every time). I also added Assignment 3, and some handouts that go with it, and its dropbox. I have downloaded all of your Assignments 1, but there is no way I am going to be able to grade them before Friday - one week is just not enough time for me to grade all of that. So I am plowing my way through them and will return them when I can.
Is in VISTA. Order will be me, you, committee. I will bring "5 minutes" piece of paper to warn you as your time starts to be up in your presentation.
Andrea has set up an announcements blog for the DL, to save her having to send to me every announcement (which would cause time delay), or having to send global e-mails (which would casue all sorts of grief). It's at http://oliverubyhenty.wordpress.com/ - please subscribe now. If you do not know how, ask the Lab, or me, or Andrea, or anyone else. Have a nice weekend.
I have assigned scrapbook pages to everyone. You will find the list linked off the Planning Committee wiki page. At some point soon the Project Manager will develop an announcement mechanism, for reminding you about deadlines and so on.
This week's music is Johnny Clegg's In My African Dream. Johnny Clegg is known as the white Zulu, as he adopted the Zulu culture when he moved to South Africa at an early age, and formed an interracial band during the apartheid era. I have seen Johnny and his band (which has been called Savuka and Juluka over the years) a half dozen times - always a treat. He plays guitar and various string things, and does high energy Zulu dances with members of the band. His Web site uses Flash.
Are in VISTA.
Just to avoid questions as the due date approaches: The username and the password are right at the top of the handout on how to search WorldCat. The handout is the one that's in Moodle. It is different from the assignment. It is labeled "Searching WorldCat", and is in the week that is labeled "14 September 20 September".
Please print, fill in, and bring to class this release form from the Archives. Thanks.
Students in LIS 462 have two presentations which will probably have a visual component, and students in LIS 415 have a bibliographic instruction presentation assignment. Whether you do it with PowerPoint or some other presentation tool, you might want to take a look at tips for good presentations. I Google'd "good PowerPoint presentations" and came up with many suggestions. Two with which I agree generally are this one, which goes over two pages, and this one.
I have loaded two versions of the PowerPoint handout - one is six to a page and the other is three to a page. The size of the slides is the same. The difference is that the three-to-a-page has room for notes, but is twice as many print pages long.
I have returned all of your introquizzes. If you did NOT get yours in one or another of your e-mail accounts, let me know.
A few of you have discovered that you can edit your profile in Moodle, and can include a picture of yourself. I would love it if more of you did that, because otherwise all I get is 30 yellow smiley faces when I look down the assignments list, and it's a bit twlight zone.
I moved the Assignments 1 and 2 dropboxes to the days on which they were due (which also allowed me to take care of a glitch). Some of you had loaded the Introquiz into Assignment 1 by mistake. I captured your files, so you will be fine. Because of that same glitch, I will be e-mailing the Introquiz comments to you individually rather than uploading them into Moodle.
Well, it took me about three hours, but I have worked out all the committee assignments. I took into account your preferences, and I think everyone who e-mailed me got at least one of their preferences. I tried to balance load, technical and non, and your own backgrounds and interests. For those who did not e-mail me a preference, I tried to pick something which seemed appropriate for the career path indicated in your infosheet. Anyway - you will find the list on the wiki, referenced off the main page. It would be good if you could e-mail each other and try to think collectively about what you think your committee has to do, and then we will go over that on Thursday. Oddly (grin), no-one wanted the vision/mission thing, so I will take care of that, and we will let the name be just Olive Ruby Henty (duh). We will brainstorm a bit about audiences on Thursday.
Amanda was kind enough to take notes on my scribble and our discussion. I have added a link from the main page of the wiki.
This week's music is Kerden, an anthology of the top Breton guitarists. You can see a tracklist here. I love Breton music, and have seen a fair amount of it live, either in Brittany or in Glasgow at the Celtic Connections festival.
I have examined the Whole digital library handbook further. It is really about Library 2.0 more than about what we are looking at. That being said, there is something in here for every team, and some good leisure reading as well. So, I am putting it on reserve, and suggest you examine the table of contents for material relating to your team or presentations.
I have added Assignment 2 and its drop box to the Moodle block for Week 2.
I have assigned presentation days for Assignment 1 and 2. Presentations will be given in the order listed. Please keep in mind that if your presentation (including your live DL) needs any special software, we do not have administrator rights on that machine. Either bring your own laptop (and make sure ahead of time that you can connect and display with it) or give me a week's notice as to what needs to be loaded.
The PDF handout is in Moodle, along with a handout on searching WorldCat. I put both of these in the block for Week 2.
The slides for tomorrow are in VISTA.
It occurred to me at 3am (you know how it goes) that I have asked all of you to read the same things from the reading plan in the same order. By itself this is fine, but the print books among these are on 24-hour reserve. So I have changed the time period to 3-hour reserve for Bishop, Deegan, and Pace. You could also ILL most of them.
I got my hands on the Whole digital library handbook. It looks to be a good collection of readings - I will bring it to class.
Ok - groups are all formed for both assignments (sorry METS guys - you are only a duo - 23 is a prime number, what can I say). You can get to work, and I will make VISTA drop-boxes. I will assign groups to days when I get back to Boston (am in hotel foyer in Montreal), so once again, if you know you will have to miss a class on a presentation day, let me know a.s.a.p.
I put the phone, e-mail, and snack list in Moodle. If you have not yet sent me your information sheet, please do so, and I will update the list. If your biography group of two has formed, you could contact each other and get started.
The class phone, e-mail , and snack list is in VISTA. If your group for Assignment 1 or 2 is "closed", that means that you can get in touch with each other and start working.
I have assigned people to libraries, see the assignment 2 page. Everybody who sent me their preferences got one of their top three, and I have tried to avoid putting people with the same people as Assignment 1 (which is tough). There are some libraries that only have one person and some that have none, so these are still open - first come first serve. Because we shrunk to 23, I have removed one from the list - Historic Pittsburgh. I will assign three to American Memory.
I assigned everyone who had responded to the "preferences" request by 4:10 on Friday. If you have not expressed a preference, you still can - check the assignment 1 page to see what still has room. First come first serve.
I will try to remember to let you know what music was playing before class. September 6 and 7, it was Moving Hearts, The Storm. This is my number 1 Desert Island Disc. I had the good fortune to see this set performed in Glasgow about a dozen years ago, and saw Moving Hearts twice in the 80s - here and in Galway. Their web site is here - http://www.movinghearts.ie/index.shtml.
If you have trouble with Moodle, please only tell me or Cindy Fisher in the Tech Lab. Do NOT contact the Help Desk or Simmons general tech support.
Okay - the handouts for tomorrow's PPT file are in VISTA, ah, excuse me, eLearning (branding is everything).
Okay - the Web pages for the course now have all of the salient details about assignments. The only thing remaining is the PowerPoint file for day one, which is what I will spend the rest of today on.
I would like you to go the pages for Assignments 1 and 2 and send me e-mail giving me your top three choices in each assignment. I can't guarantee that you will get your top choice, but I will try (you should see the spreadsheet).
Also, if you are know that you are going to be absent from class for any of the days which say "Student presentations", you need to let me know NOW.
If you go to the class wiki, you will find that I have created a sign-up sheet for the biography assignment. Please use it to sign up for a person or event. To get to the wiki, or to find out more about the biography assignment, go to the course Web pages. I could put the URL in here, but I need you to get used to working around the Web site.
Okay - so here's the surprise. You are going to be using Moodle for this semester. It's an open source elearning system. Once you log in at http://gslis.simmons.edu/moodle/login/index.php, you will be shown the Moodle courses which are available to you. Click on LIS 415. You will then see material which I have put into Moodle, organized by week. Currently this includes Assignment 1 and its dropbox, the Introquiz and its dropbox, and the PowerPoint slides for the first lecture (in a 6-per-page PDF handout). If you have problems with Moodle, let me know.