Searching High and Low

The Kept-Up Academic Librarian recently pointed to an article in the Daily Herald about a Utah Valley State College professor who abandoned the use of a textbook

Hammond was teaching a race relations class last year and had assigned a textbook that cost about $80. Unfortunately for the students, the publishing company released a new edition and none of the students could sell the book back.

“All these students had to eat that book,” Hammond said.

That caused Hammond to re-think textbooks. Now, instead of assigning his students textbooks, Hammond assigns them reading material from journal articles and original research available on the Internet or in the library.

The good news is that many academic libraries and their parent institutions have ample resources to assist faculty in developing and delivering course readings to students. Traditional library reserves, electronic reserves, e-book collections, direct linking to articles within journal databases, and course management systems are all tools that can be found in most academic libraries.

The bad news is that a typical faculty member might not feel comfortable enough with many of the above to pursue a path away from a textbook. And that’s the easy part. How many faculty members have the time and commitment to do this:

Since then, Hammond has gotten rid of all the books textbook companies had given him. He re-did all of his courses, basing his tests and quizzes on the new material, writing his own questions because he no longer has access to banks of questions that come with the book.

It took him all last year to re-write the material for his classes. [emphasis mine]

I found a helpful video on YouTube recently detailing how to stream YouTube videos through a PowerPoint slide. The process is quite easy and it works well.

I found the default setting left a white box around my video that didn’t look good against the dark background of the slide so I changed the “BackgroundColor” and “BGColor” properties of the Shockwave Flash Object to black:

Here’s the video:

Microsoft Live Labs recently posted a video presentation (see below) highlighting two software projects, Seadragon and Photosynth. Seadragon appears to be a viewing technology that, at the very least, enables users to quickly view a collection of images at macro and micro levels while displaying them with a high degree of clarity.

Just after the first minute of the video (starting at 1:15) check out how the presenter displays a complete ebook edition of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House and how clear the text displays:

I wonder if this will eventually extend beyond image files to include live applications. As a computer user, I could see some benefits of being able to keep multiple applications open simultaneously and have the ability to bounce from one to another without having to add an additional monitor to the desktop.

As a librarian, I wonder if a Seadragon-like application could be used to reformat those “Research by Subject” pages found on many library websites. Instead of clicking from page to page to page, just zoom to your area of interest. Perhaps each row or column could represent a subject area. And instead of links to the databases, why not have a search form ready and waiting. Since the ebook option is already within grasp, the delivery of text-based materials like pathfinders and other handouts is surely a possibility.

Photosynth

Here’s how Microsoft describes the Photosynth project:

The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest – and, we hope, most exciting – way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.

In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.

Check out the video for a preview of both Seadragon and Photosynth:

Mashable recently posted an “Ultimate RSS Toolbox” article that describes over 120 RSS-related viewers and utilities. I’m glad to see so many resources available that allow people to customize how they want their information delivered. My favorite viewer is the Sage plugin for Firefox. I like having the ability to jump directly to articles/posts and viewing them in my browser. The standalone readers I’ve tried either had an integrated browser or required me to jump back and forth from reader to browser.

Library vendors such as Ebsco are finally coming around and making steps in the RSS direction. Although the process in its current form is a bit cumbersome, users can extract customized feeds that show things such as search results or table of contents. Below is a table of contents feed for College and Research Libraries, a journal published by the Association of College & Research Libraries. [In order to view these articles you'll need to be at an institution that subscribes to Ebsco's Academic Search Premier database]:

As seen on Stephen’s Lighthouse awhile back. Mandatory viewing for PowerPoint users!

Life After Death by PowerPoint