Okay, I'm a Moron...

I was browsing the class bulletin board and noticed that several classmates had questions regarding the ePrints assignment. I'm very glad I read Tim's instructions to move our "deposits" to live storage, because they'd still be sitting in my account with an "under review" status! I just moved all 25 sources live, so hopefully they appear when Dr. Tomer reviews the assignment.

ePrints3 Assignment

Well, after a good two hours, I managed to find and post 25 references to my ePrints3 account. Honestly, I think 25 references was way too many--I understood what I needed to do after the second or third reference was complete. I realized just how time consuming compiling citations really is. I'm in the reference services specialization, and I'm starting to regret it (ha, ha)!

If I Fail my GIS Midterm, I'm Blaming Michael Jackson

This week has been fairly hectic for me. Right now, in fact, I'm visiting my grandmother in Johnstown (in beautiful Cambria County!), so I had to duck into her bedroom quickly to use her computer before she spends her usual two or three hours entering online contests.

It's amazing that senior citizens can learn to use the latest technology. My grandmother is 84 years old, but she manuevers through webpages like a pro. I definitely believe that all libraries (with enough resources, of course), should have computer classes for senior citizens during the week. At the very least, there should be one course every week that introduces new patrons to the library's online catalog and how to perform simple searches.

I'll be working on this class's latest assignment tomorrow, when I return home. I spent Thursday night and Friday morning completing an assignment and a midterm exam for my GIS class. It wouldn't have taken so long, but my roommate's sister was watching all of the Michael Jackson news and video marathons she could get her hands on that night. Trust me, trying to explain the difference between vector and raster models is a bit difficult when the Thriller music video is being shown every ten minutes.

Well, my grandmother wants to use her computer, so I guess I'll have to "Beat It."

Additional Notes About the Embedded Video

I tried repeatedly to fit this video into my blogger page, but as you'll notice below, it's a bit difficult for the viewer to see any fine details regarding the Zotero installation process. I decided to stick a hyperlink below the embedded video in case someone wants to view the video in its actual size.

I also apologize for the rushed ending--I forgot that the videos are limited to five minutes' recording time!

Trying to Post this Video at an Appropriate Size is Like Trying to Herd Cats!

PLEASE NOTE: The video can also be found here: 2009-06-21_1113

Preparing for the Zotero Presentation

I finally managed to track down my friend who had been using my computer microphone for her online language lessons. I'm fairly comfortable explaining how to download and install Zotero for Firefox, so I'm getting everything set up to do the recording early tomorrow morning. I'm also excited about using Zing. I realize that this technology is nothing new, but until now, my experiences with audiovisual presentations have been limited to PowerPoint slideshows. If I need to explain to a coworker how to perform specific actions on their computers, it's easier for me to show them how to do it, rather than telling them what to do. Zing allows the utilization of both techniques. I'm definitely looking forward to this!

Google Docs Aberration!

Today, I discovered that my Assignment 2 submission was lost in cyberspace. Dr. Tomer sent me an e-mail, requesting that I resubmit the assignment because he couldn't find it. I logged into my Google Docs account and checked my documents, but I couldn't find my uploaded assignment! So, I had to upload that again.

Also, as part of Assignment 2, we had to create RSS feeds based upon our searches. I'm not sure how I managed to do this, but apparently when I initially posted the feeds as a note within Google Docs, I signed into my personal account (as opposed to my Pitt Google Docs account) and posted it there.

I really have no idea how any of this happened, but I do remember suffering from severe jet lag that night. I blame my vacation!

No homework!

I am very glad that no homework is due today. I had let a friend borrow my USB microphone a few months ago, and she hasn't returned it, yet. Considering that the next assignment involves creating a video with voice-over narration, it would have been a bit difficult to complete if the assignment were still due today.

It's Sunday night, so I'm turning in early in preparation for work in the morning and reviewing my classes' materials in the afternoon. I'll need as much sleep as I can get--it's going to be a long day tomorrow!

WorldCat Assignment

I finally had the chance to work on my WorldCat assignment today.  It was a pretty straightforward assignment: find 50 items related to scholarly journal publishing.  I entered the entire phrase into the WorldCat search bar, and immediately found over 1,000 hits.  I refined the search by selecting only items in English, and limited the results to the items found in the Library Sciences.  This narrowed my results to over 100.   I saved the first 50 results (sorted by relevance) as a list to my WorldCat account.  I then exported the list in the .RIS format, and saved it in Excel.  It looked bizarre (i.e., the citation details were spread over a series of excel columns, instead of being neatly formatted), so I checked the class Bulletin Board for Tim’s explanation.  My file looked reminiscent of the .xls file he uploaded as an example, so I think I did this correctly.

Finally, I uploaded the spreadsheet to my Google Docs account and sent Professor Tomer an e-mail notification of its completion and his access to view it.  

My initial impression of WorldCat was a positive one.  It seemed to be a less cumbersome method of obtaining and saving citations than Google Scholar.  This was a short assignment with a general search request, however, so I'm curious if WorldCat is refined enough to provide significant citation information for more specific searches.  I'll probably try some additional searches on my own time and decide if I prefer WorldCat as my primary citation engine.

It's almost 9:30 PM, though, and food takes precedence over WorldCat any day.  

 

GIS For Librarians

I have the pleasure of taking a Special Topics - GIS For Librarians class this semester. My mom majored in Geography as an Undergraduate at IUP, and subsequently worked for the Federal government as a cartographer for a few years. I've been around maps since a child, so I jumped at the chance to take this class.

We're currently learning how to apply the ArcView (map making) software to theoretical scenarios. The latest project was determining the best place to build a new university in the Boston, MA area, given specific criteria (i.e., the university should be located within 200 meters of open space, more than 5 km away from existing universities, etc.). The software is fairly easy to use, but my results didn't quite match what was given in the examples, so I'm curious as to why the discrepancy exists.

It's Thursday, and the weekend can't come soon enough!

MLIS Land Lubber

It has been quit a while since I last posted, due to the unexpected hurdles I encountered on vacation to Alaska. I knew ahead of time that I would need an internet connection to keep up with classes, so I brought my trusty Macbook and planned to use the ship's wireless internet (for anyone who has not cruised before, many cruise ships now use a satellite service for internet connections). In fact, I had successfully completed and submitted homework assignments for my MLIS 2000 class when I was on a cruise to the Caribbean during the Fall 2008 semester, so I was confident that the same scenario would occur.

This was my first time going to Alaska, so I had no idea that the internet connection, even on the ship, would be dubious at best (and nonexistant most of the time). I tried several times to connect to Pitt's library services, but received nothing but time outs or pages that refused to load. It was simply impossible to do anything other than send short e-mails before the connection was lost. Incidentally, the ship had a library, and I attempted to use the public computers to connect to the Internet, but had no more success than with my laptop.

I flew from Seattle to Chicago to Harrisburg this evening. I finally, finally completed Assignment 2 and made the bibliographic data and RSS feeds available to Professor Tomer. It took me a bit of time to figure out how to create RSS feeds linked to my Scopus searches, so I hope everything turned out okay.

In other news, I start a new job tomorrow. I'm hoping that the jet lag will disappear by the morning.