RSS Readers

Our last Blue Sky Friday discussed RSS and Flock but I thought it might be useful for everyone to see some documentation on the subject. Probably the most important thing about RSS is that you have to have an "aggregator" or RSS reader to be able to read the RSS feed. Most current browsers include an RSS reader. These include Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 (not 6), Opera and Safari as well as Flock. The RSS reader used in Flock and by some of the Firefox users in the meeting is called Sage. If you are using Firefox, you may want to give this one a try. If you cannot view an RSS feed, you are probably using an old browser and need to upgrade.

RSS feeds make it easier to stay on top of the information you want. By finding feeds that focus on your specific topic of interest you can avoid plowing through infromation you don't want. In the case of our own library catalog, you can create a search and subscribe to the feed so that whenever new materials are added, the titles are listed in the subscription.

When searching for RSS feeds, keep your eyes posted for the feed icon. It is the symbol that shows an RSS feed is available for the information you are viewing. Some of my favorite RSS feeds are Digg, BBC Americas, and Slashdot oh and of course the UNF Library's What's New feed. Feel free to leave comments with your favorite feeds.

Top Ten Visions for the Library

I've belonged to the T.A.G. (Technical Advisory Group) for over a year now and one of the first things I talked to them about was putting together a vision for our libraries. I quickly placed mine on the super secret TAG member eyes only blog but no one took up the challenge to confirm my genius or decry my insanity. Now, nearly a year after posting it, I'd like to share it with all of you. Below is my Top 10 list just as I posted it back in 2007.

Top Ten Things I'd Like to See in the Library

Here is my top ten list of the technologies I would like to see in SUS
libraries. It is my personal list. Perhaps others share this vision.
Please comment.

1. Virtual Special Collections.
One firm belief that I have is that if you cannot check it out, it should be available online. I'd like to be able to have a virtual full image tour of Special Collections. Every picture, every object should be viewable and browseable(sp?). I envision something like a QuicktimeVR tour or Second Life exhibit.

2. Patron unmediated borrowing
One-click ILL that goes directly to the lending institution.

3. Patron unmediated checkout
It just sounds cooler than self check-out

4. Real-time account creation.
From Banner's mouth to Aleph's brain, when you become a part of the university family, you shouldn't have to wait to have a library account nor should our librarians have to create a temporary ID.

5. All SUS users accessible through Aleph
Please don't make me leave Aleph and go to a web page to determine the status of another University student already in Aleph. Don't even make me log in as someone special. We have a union catalog, how about a union patron file?

6. Catalog results with book covers, reviews and a virtual map
I want to see the book. I want to know what the faculty and post grads think and I want a picture of where to go to get the book.

7. Catalog results with campus associations
If we have an authority in the field of astrophysics, I'd like to know it when I pull up hits in our catalog on the subject. Have contact info or links to their website. This is the next step in knowledge management IMHO.

8. Seamless sign-on for Aleph patrons
Once you log into the network, you shouldn't have to login to your library account. You certainly shouldn't have to have a separate user name and password.

9. A single report to display holdings count and circulations by call number range
Doesn't everyone want this?

10. SUS driving media contracts
We have the power to tell the vendors what we want and the what rights we want if we bargain collectively. I think we give up too easily.

Vista Migration in the Library

We are a couple of weeks in to the semester and computer use has been very heavy. In fact, heavier than I remember last year at this time. At this point, I think I can give some reasonable first impressions of using Vista in the library commons.

First thing is that it seems to work. Our environment consists overwhelmingly of Dell PCs. These range from one to Four years old though most are one to two. We don't seem to be experiencing driver incompatibilities so commonly discussed on the web. I have to give our C-Tech Nick most of the credit but I suspect that many of the reported issues were a bit exaggerated. One exception is a problem we are experiencing printing from Firefox. It appears that special consideration must be made with default printing from that app that we didn't have to deal with in XP. The solution is likely simple but with over 270 frozen computers, the implementation of such a fix may be a chore.

The greatest chore was the development of the image. Without going into great detail, the tried and tested tools used to develop and deploy images to PCs do not get along with Vista and Microsoft's own replacements were sorely lacking. It isn't a user issue but it caused enough time and pain to be worth mentioning.

The best thing so far is that Vista appears to have eliminated an annoying problem we had with computers occasionally hanging during the login process. This would happen just prior to displaying a usable desktop. We never found the cause so the solution was to ctrl-alt-delete, log out and then log back in again. I haven't seen a Vista machine do this and that is very nice.

On a negative note, Vista is slower. This shouldn't be a surprise. I think every version of Windows is more resource intensive but it takes longer to boot, longer to log in and the applications, specifically Office 2007, are not as snappy. The login time is the most annoying and Vista seems to be in no hurry to give users a desktop. Once again, Nick has put a lot of effort into streamlining the library's image and I will stack our computer performance up against anyone else on campus but it is still tedious. I hope to alleviate some of this by upping the memory in our computers to 2GB (from 1GB). This may not help the boot and login times but should impact the application speeds.

Overall, the move to Vista is not a bad thing. If the additional memory can resolve the performance issues I mentioned than we will have a better commons than we had with XP. Just be sure to note that this "upgrade" cost us a considerable amount of behind the scene's work and will cost us in hard dollars.

I'll revisit this again at the end of the semester to give a longer term impression.

Library Media Macs

The iMacs in the Media Services area continue to be more of a challenge than we had originally hoped. All of the iMacs have been configured to log into the campus domain, which is good. They have also been configured to print to the pay-for-print system, also good. Unfortunately, when printing from installed appllications, you must one again authenticate. This is handled by receiving a login dialog upon selecting your print options. This in and of itself is not bad but the username field is already filled in with your proper name and that will not work. You must change your name to your N-number and then enter your password below. This is not a terrible thing but certainly not completely user friendly. Worse is the fact that when trying to print from Firefox, the user ID box appears and dissapears immediately so you cannot authenticate at all. In other words, no printing from Firefox. I hope to have a solution to the Firefox printing issue today (September 9, 2008) even if it means using Safari instead but no timeline is set for changing the username display.

Another issue we face is that some of the DVDs from media services do not want to play properly when using the EyeTV application. The DVD menu will launch but you cannot select "Play All" or any of the chapters. I have experienced this with the sign language DVDs. The only solution is to use the iMacs DVD drive (not the VCR/DVD combo) and use Apple's built-in DVD player. Again not terrible but certainly less than intuitive. No timeline is set for resolving this issue either.

Finally, I am concerned by the fact that the iMacs' browser has been locked down to limit access to sites supporting their specific purpose but that is not clear when sitting down to the computers. I hope to have a new bookmark file installed today that shows where they can go. I'd also like to revisit which sites are blocked.

The iMacs seem to be fairly popular and I think things will get better but we need to work out some of these usability issues.