Elias Tzoc blog!

October was -again- a busy month … from meetings, reach-out activities, article reviews, digital humanities, open access, coding to ALAO.

As we continue to work towards the “goal” of the CDS to support faculty and students’ digital projects, this month I was part of a couple of new and interesting potential collaborations.  In mid October we met with a professor who is interested in implementing a digital and interactive component to a Freedom Summer project, we’re now looking at the ARIS platform and hopefully we can either re-use it or find something similar to it … one key feature of ARIS is its support for developing mobile games.  We also met with a group of students who are currently working on a “journal” project; our potential contribution would be with the technical infrastructure and for that, we’re most likely to use OJS, which continues to be the most popular system for peer-review and open-access journals.  A third meeting took place thanks to a contact made by one of our library liaisons; in this case, a history grad student is interested in adding a “map” layer to create some data visualization for a collection from the 16th century … an example in mind is the Mapping the Republic of Letters.

Also, there is no doubt that the Sixth Annual Open Access Week was a big highlight for this month.  For us, the first of two MUL events during OA week was the Digital Humanities Symposium; the event was an opportunity for faculty, grad students and librarians to listen to two outside and five local speakers … as well as to talk about what DH could mean for them/us.  The second event was a talk How Open Scholarship is Changing Research, which was organized by the Library’s Scholarly Communication working group.  Moreover and for the second year, online visitors found a pop-up image on the library’s homepage with a message “What if you had no access to the library?” … will this help create an awareness about the ongoing problem of journal cost? mmm who knows, although for many, the Harvard’s statement about “not being able” to keep up with all the subscription costs may also help others understand the problem.

As for my tech/learning activities, this month was a good time to start learning a bit more about Git.  Because of my mobile theme contribution to DSpace 3.0, I finally understand (better) the benefits of a version control software; although at first, Git can be quite overwhelming or confusing.  A good tutorial I found is Git Essential Training by Kevin Skoglund. There is definitely more to learn, but so far, my list of 10+ GIT commands are keeping me busy!

Last, on Friday Oct. 26 I was again at the 38th ALAO Annual Conference.  Our CW team had a poster session -which was about the work we did for the CW Symposium and the ALA/NEH book-discussion series.

I was also part of talk Skate to Where the Puck is Going to Be, where we presented an overview of the CDS … the outline included: Setting the stage, Designing the space, Reaching our clients, Tech tools, and Services.

Ok, that’s it for now … now back to some GIT experiments as well as finish up with a draft for D-Lib Magazine

.

Last week was quite a busy week for me -not to mention a night with only 3 hours of sleep, but that’s a different story.  Anyway, on Thursday, November 3rd, I started my day with an early (6:30 AM) online presentation on “Technical Skills in Digital Library Programs” which was kind of a report on a recent publication I co-authored with John Millard.  My talk was part of the 300+ presentations at the Library 2.011 WorldWide Virtual Conference.  I think the conference was a huge success, according to the website, they had more than 5,000 people registered from more than 150 countries … and it was FREE.  So thanks to the co-founding sponsors: The School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at San José State University, Classroom 2.0, and the Global Education Conference.  If anyone is interested in watching some of the sessions, links to all the recordings are available at: http://www.library20.com/

On Friday, November 4th, I attended the 2011 ALAO Annual Conference in Toledo, OH.  There, I had to wear a couple of different hats … at first, I setup an information table for the Technical, Electronic, and Digital Services Interest Group (TEDSIG), just as last year, we asked visitors to suggest possible topics for the upcoming 2012 spring workshop.  Also, at lunch I presented the TEDDY Award, which recognizes an individual’s significant contributions to TEDSIG & ALAO.  This year, the winner was Anne Gilliland, Head, Copyright Management Office, at the Ohio State University Libraries.  Among Anne’s contribution to ALAO include: served a term as the Technical Services Interest Group Co-Chair, served on the ALAO Executive Board, presented at a number of TEDSIG workshops and at several ALAO annual conferences.

In the second session, I was also part of a panel “Planning your Digital Resource Commons and Institutional Repository: What do you need to know?”  In this group of six speakers, I talked about the possibilities and technical requirements needed for customizing the front-end of DSpace.  I also provided a quick overview of the DSpace registry and the number of institutions worldwide using the software for both IR and digital library (digitized) content.  In the afternoon, John Millard and I hosted a poster session:

This poster demonstrated methods of loading and displaying diverse type of cultural heritage objects using the DSpace.

In the last session, I attended a talk on “Diversity Program: Incorporating Cultural Awareness into your Library,” by Heather Maloney & Michelle McKinney from the University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash College.  The talk was about the development of a greater understanding of each other and the diverse population that a library serves.  In the Q&A section, it was great to share something about the Chinese videos created at Miami.  Ok, that was then, now back to some more coding and proposal writing!

.

Last Friday, October 29th, I attended the 2010 ALAO Annual Conference in Columbus, OH.  It was my very first time at this one-day local conference and it was a busy day.

As a co-chair of the Technical, Electronic, and Digital Services Interest Group (TEDSIG), this year I helped in creating this TEDSIG poster.

My day started in helping/setting up our table –including some publicity materials, a form for suggestions for the spring workshop, and a membership sing-up sheet –yes, we got some new members!

I also attended the session “Quantitative Assessment of Diversity Goals, Methods, and Tools” presented by Eileen Theodore-Shusta and Christopher Guder from Ohio University.  The presenters talked about the work of the Diversity Committee in administering two surveys (in 2009 and 2010) to assess the progress in meeting their diversity goals –originally set in their strategic plan in 2006.  It was interesting to learn that one of their findings was the need for more training opportunities; I think finding “good incentives” for increasing participation is still very essential for any type of training.

In the afternoon, John Millard and I had a poster session on our recent LSTA summer project.  We basically talked about the major activities completed in this five months project.  We had about 30 visitors and 5 extended conversations with people who were interested in our experience of migration a large collection from CONTENTdm to DSpace.

All visitors received a bookmark, which looks something like this:

In general, I found this conference very worthwhile.  I made some new contacts within the ALAO network and I look forward to going back in 2011.
.