Posts Tagged ‘blog’

This is the end: Jerome project

Posted on August 1st, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

The JISC-funded Jerome project ended on 31 July 2011. Here are the final few project blog posts:

Jerome record pageThe Jerome search portal itself is [still] at http://jerome.library.lincoln.ac.uk/, and the open data APIs are all being documented on http://data.lincoln.ac.uk/ – we’ll not be switching any of it off any time soon :-)

Subdomain dot something dot blah dot uk

Posted on July 28th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

The University of Lincoln has… rather a lot of web subdomains. Some might say too many. Our JISC funded Linking You project touched on this problem (assuming it is a problem), and then slowly—and wisely—backed away.

All of the following can by found using a Google domain search – each of these can be suffixed by “lincoln.ac.uk” to form a real domain name:

Disclaimer: I’ve no idea how many of these are current, official, or meaningful. However, here’s a humble proposal: if you want a new subdomain under *.lincoln.ac.uk, you have to have it tattooed on your arm first.

  1. alumni.lincoln.ac.uk
  2. auth.lincoln.ac.uk
  3. awww02.lincoln.ac.uk
  4. awww05.lincoln.ac.uk
  5. blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk
  6. blogs.lincoln.ac.uk (and any number of blog sub-subdomains)
  7. commons.lincoln.ac.uk
  8. cross.lincoln.ac.uk
  9. cswww02.lincoln.ac.uk
  10. dev-www.lincoln.ac.uk
  11. dcapi.lincoln.ac.uk
  12. data.lincoln.ac.uk
  13. diverse.lincoln.ac.uk
  14. ecards.lincoln.ac.uk
  15. email.lincoln.ac.uk
  16. enterprise.lincoln.ac.uk
  17. eprints.lincoln.ac.uk
  18. filmpolicy.lincoln.ac.uk
  19. forensicchemistry.lincoln.ac.uk
  20. gateway.lincoln.ac.uk
  21. gophers.lincoln.ac.uk
  22. graphicdesign.lincoln.ac.uk
  23. helene.lincoln.ac.uk
  24. hemswell.lincoln.ac.uk
  25. learninglab.lincoln.ac.uk
  26. learninglandscapes.lincoln.ac.uk
  27. lisc.lincoln.ac.uk
  28. lncd.lincoln.ac.uk
  29. lost.lincoln.ac.uk
  30. m.lincoln.ac.uk
  31. mccplacement.lincoln.ac.uk
  32. mchome.lincoln.ac.uk
  33. my.lincoln.ac.uk
  34. neo.lincoln.ac.uk
  35. ojs.lincoln.ac.uk
  36. online.lincoln.ac.uk (and several sub-subdomains including cwd.online.lincoln.ac.ukopenatrium.online.lincoln.ac.uk, and nucleus.online.lincoln.ac.uk)
  37. orth.lincoln.ac.uk
  38. owps.lincoln.ac.uk
  39. pay.lincoln.ac.uk
  40. pebblepad.lincoln.ac.uk
  41. phone.lincoln.ac.uk
  42. portal.lincoln.ac.uk
  43. portfolios.lincoln.ac.uk
  44. posters.lincoln.ac.uk
  45. print.lincoln.ac.uk
  46. reviewdb.lincoln.ac.uk
  47. robots.lincoln.ac.uk
  48. shop.lincoln.ac.uk
  49. student.dc.lincoln.ac.uk
  50. studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk
  51. support.lincoln.ac.uk
  52. thesocialapp.internal.lincoln.ac.uk
  53. tvhistory.lincoln.ac.uk
  54. visit.lincoln.ac.uk
  55. webpages.lincoln.ac.uk
  56. wwh.lincoln.ac.uk
  57. www.lincoln.ac.uk (our main corporate website)
  58. www.15×15.lincoln.ac.uk
  59. www.frontier.lincoln.ac.uk
  60. www.ix3.lincoln.ac.uk
  61. www.lsj.lincoln.ac.uk
  62. www.tsvc.lincoln.ac.uk

And I’ve not even got started on our own dirt – the University Library’s own little handful of subdomains.

Firstly, what the Library hasn’t got. There’s nothing to see at:

  • library.lincoln.ac.uk

(i.e. we’ve nothing at the ‘root’ Library subdomain. A couple of people have spotted this slight illogicality.)

Now what we have got, or have had in the recent past:

…this points at our SirsiDynix HiP 3.08 library catalogue. Really, if anything, this ought to represent the overall web presence of the Library, with HiP relegated to something like catalogue.library.lincoln.ac.uk

…the Jerome project.

  • blogs.library.lincoln.ac.uk

…which is defunct and redirects to the main blogs site.

  • eprints.library.lincoln.ac.uk

…a moribund, older installation of our EPrints Repository used for the 2008 RAE.

UKCoRR are getting social

Posted on July 15th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

This is a copy of a post that I wrote for the UKCoRR (UK Council of Research Repositories) blog, at: http://ukcorr.blogspot.com/

While UKCoRR’s “official” web presence is in the shop for repairs, we’ve been taking tentative steps to securing UKCoRR a space on some of the big social websites. In no particular order, we now have profiles on:

Rather than obsess and worry about whether to engage with these (or any other social sites: Google+, anyone?), the committee are taking the time-honoured “just do it” approach, and assuming hoping that our fellow UKCoRR members—inherently social creatures all!—will naturally gravitate to using those sites with which they’re most comfortable.

…none of this is intended to replace in any way the existing tools for UKCoRR networking which have already proved themselves so useful: the events and the members’ mailing list.

Q. Where else on the open web should UKCoRR plant its flag?

Next up: news of what we have planned for the main UKCoRR web site.

Paul Stainthorp
UKCoRR Web & Publicity Officer

10 practical & accessible library technology blogs

Posted on June 17th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

Here are ten of the best practical library tech blogs that I follow. They’re all about technology (ish), but they’re not geeky or inaccessible. Most but not all, are written by people in of UK Higher Education libraries. In case you want to subscribe to them en masse, I’ve bundled them up into an OPML file which you should be able to import into a feed reader (e.g. Google Reader).

Q. Have you got a good library technology blog? Care to share?

  1. Copac Developments
    What’s happening behind the scenes at Copac
  2. Electronic Resources Blog
    Library Services, University of Huddersfield
  3. eLibrary
    eLibrary team, Birmingham City University
  4. Fulup’s blog
    A librarian at De Montfort University
  5. Musings around librarianship
    Aaron Tay, a librarian at the National University of Singapore
  6. NewT Bham – where technology and libraries meet
    New Technologies Group at the University of Birmingham Library
  7. Phil Bradley’s Weblog
    Internet consultant and (2011) CILIP Vice-president
  8. ResourceShelf ResourceBlog
    We find the sources; you get the credit!
  9. “Self-plagiarism is style” – Dave Pattern’s blog
    Library Systems Manager at the University of Huddersfield
  10. UoL Library Blog – develop, debate, innovate
    University of Leicester

Where are we with the VRE?

Posted on March 30th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

(Taken from: http://vreproject.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/)

The VRE project at the University of Lincoln is looking at building, from scratch, a lightweight, modular, loosely-coupled online environment which will allow academic staff, students & external researchers to collaborate on research projects using a  ‘toolkit’ of re-usable applications (calendaring, document authoring, web publishing, rights management, etc.)

We’re installing and trialling a couple of applications which could provide the framework of the VRE itself:

And we’re looking at a mixture of existing and new web applications and initiatives (shared calendars, RefWorks, the Google Docs API, the Repository, WordPress) to provide the constituent applications of the VRE.

VRE project blog

Maths ‘n’ Stats support centre website

Posted on December 7th, 2010 by Paul Stainthorp

I’ve been working on a little website for the University of Lincoln’s resident statistician, John Flynn, to promote to students (and their lecturers) the services of the Lincoln Maths and Statistics Support Centre.

It’s [yet another] WordPress site on the University’s blogging / self-publishing platform, ‘themed’ with the University’s new-ish CWD (Common Web Design) template.

The support centre itself operates out of the GCW University Library (“Learning Development” suite) three days a week, and helps students with assessment worries and analysis for project work. Related: sigma – Centre for Excellence in Mathematics & Statistics Support.

The website is at: http://mathsandstats.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

Screenshot of the Maths and Stats Support Centre website

I’ve also added a widget to the Library ‘tab’ on Blackboard, which displays links to the [currently] 4 pages on the Maths and Stats website. This I created using the site’s RSS feed (it has the WordPress ‘RSS Include Pages‘ plugin activated) – fed through Feed2JS to turn it into JavaScript-within-HTML tags – then embedded within a Blackboard HTML widget. Easy peasy.

Screenshot of the Blackboard widget for the Maths and Stats Support Centre

Jings: RefWorks

Posted on October 12th, 2010 by Paul Stainthorp

For more than a year, I’ve been meaning to resurrect my website of tips & tricks for reference management. I finally got around to doing so today, with a new video tutorial about sending references to a RefWorks account from the University of Lincoln Repository.

You can see it at – http://refworks.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

Screenshot of the RefWorks tips and tricks blog

Last July, inspired by my colleague (CERD Technology Officer) Joss Winn‘s collection of Google Search Tutorials, I began creating my own screencast videos, with the intention that they would “build up over time into a collection of useful video tutorials to help [people] use RefWorks personal bibliographic management software“.

I still think there’s real potential in creating short, single-issue video tutorials, published in blog form, to address RefWorks / bibliography management FAQs. So I’m now going to attempt to keep on top of it and add a new video every week. I’m creating the screencasts using TechSmith Jing software, and the site itself is running on WordPress (on the University of Lincoln’s own blogs service, at: blogs.lincoln.ac.uk).

Jing (and the associated screencast.com website) makes it reasonably easy to create screencasts with audio, and to embed them in any web page (including a WordPress blog post)…

…and you might assume that six or seven years of presenting live radio would make easy for me to knock off professional-sounding voiceovers straight into a headset mic. Yes; you might very well assume that.

The first six tools for practical Library 2.0

Posted on July 29th, 2010 by Paul Stainthorp

The_first_six_tools_for_practical_web_2.htm

A list of six free Web 2.0 tools and technologies that may be of use to libraries. Adapted from a post on the University of Lincoln’s library staff blog.

View this item on the University Repository: http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/2528/