I intend to take a good look at the JISC funded CD-LOR project. (community dimensions of learning object repositories). The Brits are light-years ahead of us when it comes to IR work. The JISC Funded CD-LOR project has been identifying and analysing the factors that influence practical uptake and implementation of learning object (LO) repositories within a range of different learning communities.
They have drafted some guidelines on e-Learning and Repostitories and they're searching for feed-back. Check out the draft at
http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/cd-lor/DraftStructuredGuidelines.pdf and provide your feedback by 3/15 if you're a Brit.
I did receive the invitation to present to the CSU Senior Research Administators on 3/23. The talk is, "Supporting Digital Scholarship: Opportunities, Issues and Service Development."
I'm going to take a non-Powerpoint approach and go with very few slides. Instead I'm planning on doing quick demonstrations of new scholarly communication tech and discussion some use cases where there are barriers to digital scholarship. I don't know yet how much time I'm going to have. I might have up to an hour.
This is going to be fun!
MPOW's mobile web site is going live tomorrow. Way cool!
Now only to get the original web site redesigned so that we can utilize stylesheets for that type of thing and reduce duplication of effort. The redesign process is very scary for the short-staffed and overworked. Baby steps, baby steps. At least we're one step closer to separating content from display. Yay!
Labels: mobile, MPOW
The
techbootcamp was a rousing success and a helluva lot of fun. We dedicated ourselves to hardware evaluation and set up since we had to carry the donated equipment into the
boneless ranch.
Check out the photo series.
After we moved everything into the space, we put the equipment onto a work bench for the inspection process. We started with the servers -- only 1 of the 4 we had actually functioned. We're saving the other 3 for parts.
We cracked the cases and switched out some RAM -- I think this means we get some street cred as systems techie types now.
Thanks to TJ for the use of the ranch space (and roommate Terry too!), Mayor Jim and Connie Lynn for the tech expertise and to all of the attendees. See you in 2 weeks to install the OS -- (Redhat? SuSE?).
Labels: techbootcamp
9AM - met with thesis cataloging team re: workflows. Wished to myself for the umpteenth time that we had a formalized ETD program at
MPOW. We do have a
very small pilot program, but I must confess I haven't been working to populate the pilot because I have a more pressing need to work on our
branded interface (no judgements please, it's still in development).
Several years ago the campus thesis coordinator mentioned that it would be a "cold day in hell" before this campus went with ETD due to the complexities of managing the workflow process and the academic governance issues (must run things by Graduate Councils and Academic Senate and other whatnot). Things are looking up, however. We now have a hip-to-it Vice President for Research on campus who is very interested in Scholarly Communication issues. He has tentatively invited me give a presentation to the university's system-wide research officers committee. This is high ranking folk. All are pretty much on the VP or Assistant VP level. Such an opportunity! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the proposed invitation will work out. My AVP is polling the members of the committee to gage interest. I would love to see some system-wide coordination on that front.
It's been awhile since I've blogged. The
day gig got really busy for me as I mentioned on
my former blog. I was reassigned from cataloging to repository work due to my background and interests. It was a strategic decision. MPOW is moving system-wide to have all the libraries working with IR.
I'm beginning to catch my breath, kind of, so I'm getting back into blogging. At
libraryrfid.net I used WordPress, on my own personal server space (
shout-outs to LIShost!). I wanted to teach WP to myself so I installed it with a whole bunch of help from Blake. Too bloody complicated. I have a bad habit of wanting to know exactly what goes on under the hood. I've also got a bad habit of wanting to do everything myself so I can learn exactly what goes on under the hood.
Good for learning, yes. For launching production level services? Not so much. Let me explain about the day gig -- I love my job. This is not a place where I whine about the challenges I face. It's where I muck about and try to solve the puzzles.
Today I overcame my mechanic's impulse to do it all myself and configured blogger to drive my new blog. I'm tickled that I managed to get it to (a) post on my own domain (b) apply some open source css courtesy of
OSWD. Thanks and a big shout out go out to
Andreas Viklund for the simple design. I need to tweak a few things, but I should have it completely standards compliant and universally accessible soon. That's the goal anyway.
I don't believe in beta. I just throw my stuff up on the web and keep refining as I go. No waiting to release a perfect product. It's what I'm doing with my day-gig project. With that I rely on the general obscurity of being unlinked. As long as I don't make too much noise, maybe nobody will find the project web site and blog until it's a bit more polished. If they do find the website, well they can become pilot partners because they are obviously intrepid.
