Food for Thought

Didn’t attend Educause this year but I think this opening paragraph from Prof Hacker conveys my opinions better than I could myself: (Full article can be found here)

“Educause (the organization) describes itself as a “nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.” The annual meeting features sessions and workshops but also an enormous exhibit hall where various vendors promote their products, software and hardware alike.

Original post from ProfHacker can be found here

“Developed by Joscha Legewie, a Columbia graduate student, ZotFile is a Firefox (or Standalone Zotero) extension that enhances—or awesomifies, as I’ve discovered—Zotero’s native attachment handling. ZotFile makes it easy to add, rename, and move attachments (for example, ZotFile will automatically add your most recently downloaded PDF as an attachment, and you can set up all sorts of automatic renaming conventions).”

Students are continuing to “check in” at Preus Library via the social networking application FourSquare. So much so, that we have a new “mayor”—Luther student Seth V. For those of you unfamiliar with FourSquare, you can become the mayor of a site like the Preus Library by being the person to have “checked in” the most in the past 60 days.

Currently, all that comes with the position of Preus Library Mayor is bragging rights; but we’re open to suggestions on potential honors Preus mayors may receive in the future.

This week’s Suggestion of the Week appearing on the LIS digital sign in the library :

Suggestion: “A shredder for students to use!”

Response: “As a pilot project, LIS is providing a shredder to be stationed in the Document Center (downstairs in Main) for use by students, faculty, and staff to shred on-campus materials. Look for advertisements soon in the Bulletin and elsewhere once the shredder is in place. Or drop by the Document Center in a couple of weeks to see if it is ready for action.”

Good info-graphic on student and instructor use of technology on-campus.

Link to complete posting at ProfHacker

“What I do now is make a standalone note for each thought or piece of evidence. But I also make the note a related item of the source from which I got the idea. You can see in the screenshot below that this standalone note is related to a book.”

Original post from ProfHacker (direct link to complete post):

“…Made for the Android Market by John M. Schanck, Scanner for Zotero is as dead simple as an application can be, yet it makes inputting physical book information much, much easier. After linking it to your Zotero account (via generating an API key – a largely painless, if slightly inelegant procedure), you just click “Scan New Item” and point the Barcode Reader at the barcode of the thing you wish to catalog.

My sister passed along an interesting (and entertaining) little snippet from the Plan of Grinnell College’s Director of Social Commitment, Doug Cutchins. Though the story is specific to Grinnell, Steve Jobs’ vision could have been applied to most small liberal arts schools.

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The DMRegister has a nice article on Steve Jobs’ time as a Grinnell College Trustee.

As of the writing of this blog post, Preus Library officially has a new mayor—Luther student Peter B. What? You weren’t aware that there even was a mayor of Preus Library? Well, it’s not an official position on the LIS staff list, but it is a reality on FourSquare.

What’s FourSquare? FourSquare is a location-based app for your phone or mobile device where you can “check in” at various locations and leave tips, share pictures, sometimes win prizes, and earn badges for first or frequent check ins.

Interested in banned books, or perhaps just looking for a snack before heading to see Garrison Keillor tonight? Stop by the library’s new cafe space at 6 p.m. tonight for some snacks inspired by frequently challenged and banned books.

Check out the following menu:
Bread: Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Bread plays a key role (a means of survival and friendship) in this dystopian triology depicting a post-apocalyptic North America where child tributes from different districts fight to the death in the annual Hunger Games.