Software Freedom Day 2008

Melbourne was a good place to be this week - particularly for those lucky enough to hear Charles Leadbetter talk about his book  We-think at the State Library of Victoria. Thinking about organisation and action without organisations was interesting, as well as the advice to constantly ask the question "Is there an open source way of doing this?" He summed up by affirming that being open is good for democracy, is good for equality and is good for freedom. Inspirational stuff.

It would be good to still be there today to celebrate Software Freedom Day with Brianna (Wikimedia), Kathy Reid and Gerry White.
Plenty of other activity around the world too
http://cgi.softwarefreedomday.org/map.shtml

Software Freedom Day seems a perfect time to think of and thank those freedom fighters who have inspired us.

Tags: victoria events open source software
Posted at 12:17AM Sep 20, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

The What I Do Wordle

Another great idea for Wordle from Steve.

This one represents the keywords from my current Job and Person spec, and provides some food for reflection. There's lots of information in here, but perhaps not as much people-oriented or innovation activity as might have been expected. In fact it's a pretty Web 1.0 statement in spite of being expressed so beautifully and creatively here.

Tags: information management pdp alia
Posted at 04:12PM Aug 30, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

University of Adelaide

I found this image in Wikimedia Commons (thanks Pfctdayelise) and am using it at a workshop for practice in inserting images in blogs.

We think that 200 pixels is about the right width for images in this blog.

Tags: librariessa universities
Posted at 02:26PM Aug 29, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

Colleagues

This afternoon I am getting started on research for an article on social networking, and interested to find that according to the OED 'colleague' is one of those nouns that can be 'verbed'. A pretty obscure, historical usage that may have found renewed purpose. So when we link up with a colleague in me.edu.au it is quite correct 'to colleague' them - we just have to get used to saying it.

Tags: showme social networking me-edu-a
Posted at 05:48PM Aug 09, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

Prehistoric digital footprints

Updating my CV this afternoon for the first time in 7 years I was amazed to find in the ERIC archive some very early publications that I thought were available only in boxes packed in the garage. I certainly didn't have a digital copy.

One of them was: Mitchell, P. & Indermauer, J. 1997. Selecting a second generation automation system, in Dillon, K. School library automation in Australia 2nd ed, Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, pp. 143-159.

The scanning is very rough with no OCR, but some of the content has stood the test of time. I wish I'd followed this checklist more closely since then - "global change on authority records" and "can customise search screen to suit users" particularly made me wince.

I don't know what generation we are up to now, but with South Australia and ACT departments both reviewing library systems again it seems a good time to revisit this kind of document. What are the priorities for library administration systems for the next 5 years? A few to get started with...

1. fast, single search across physical resources and digital content
2. easy user uploading, cataloguing, tagging, bookmarking, rating, annotating, linking, editing and exporting
3. made for mobile

Tags: libraries archives
Posted at 04:44PM Jun 28, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

Statistical literacy

Services and resources from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to support statistical literacy.[Read More]

Tags: statistics resources digital literacies multiliteracies
Posted at 11:43PM Jun 16, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

Fun with tags

Wordle lets you create a once-off tag cloud and apply different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Could be good as an information literacy tool that shows students the main points of a document or essay.[Read More]

Tags: eportfolio web2ools tagging aslaxx
Posted at 10:39AM Jun 15, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

e-pd project 2008: the partners

An introduction to the SLASA e-pd project 2008 'Learning with Web 2.0'

Tags: learning professional professional associations slasa libraries web2 e-pd
Posted at 10:27PM Jun 10, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

Search relevance my way

Rate my search results in Wikia

Tags: search quality personalisation wikia
Posted at 07:10AM Jun 04, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[2]