Blogs at the University of Florida Libraries

• Smathers Libraries Budget Planning Blog, 2009-2010
• Office of the UF President: Budget News
• UF 2009 Faculty Senate Budget Blog

Go Gators! Congratulations!

Someday we’ll be archiving photos of tonight’s game in the University Archives Digital Collection, but tonight is for rejoicing by Gators everywhere!

The University of Florida’s historic biscuit dates back to 1913 when a hungry student mailed it to his parents as evidence of UF’s food quality. The George A. Smathers Libraries now preserves the historic biscuit. Our biscuit can be viewed online along with millions of other images through the University of Florida Digital Collections.

Every institution archives objects illustrative of its own history. Join us here to let us know about yours.

We’ve got the Biscuit. You bring gravy.

More>>

Logan upgraded the blog server so that we’re now running WordPress MU 2.6.2! This may not sound exciting, but it means an improved interface for authors/editors and it means that we can now take advantage of newer WordPress themes and plugins and more!

Please let me know if you have any new themes you’d like installed and I’ll get them added. I have a few I’ll be adding today or tomorrow already, so please choose more so we can all benefit from more easy options!

Are You Ready to Take it Now?

Let’s Go!
Wednesday September 3, 2008
Room 419
1:00-2:30am
Instructor/Moderator: Merrie Davidson

Need Some Ideas? Want Some Help? Haven’t Started, But Need to Know How To?

Systems set up a Wordpress.org blog server for us. It’s easy and fun. We can communicate with each other and our patrons quickly and easily. And you get to use your own voice to write to others. Find your creativity. Write like you’ve always wanted to.

For works first published in the USA, the “Copyright Slider” is a handy reference. In using it, if it comes up that you need to check to see if the copyright has been renewed, the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database is another great complimentary resource.

I learned a ton at ALA since I’m still new (it was my first time attending the annual conference), but I’m sure we all did so it would be great to share. One particularly unexpected tidbit of information I learned was that the University of Chicago is building a new storage facility, and the design is like nothing I’d have thought of for storage. Their news release is online here, but their facility “will be a partially underground facility topped with a glass dome and have the capacity to house 3.5 million volumes of print material — making the University of Chicago the country’s sole top academic research library to keep its entire collection on campus.”

While trying to build underground in Florida is a very bad idea, the idea of a gorgeous reading room for those needing immediate access is really appealing to me in many ways because then the storage facility becomes a storage facility and research hub. Of course, this model is on a specific case with a localized campus environment, but it’s still a beautiful solution even if it isn’t applicable for many others.

What else did others learn that I did or didn’t expect to?

The other day, project management software came up and the Libraries do have an account with Basecamp from 37Signals (the site is here, this link goes to an external site off of the University webspace and is provided for reference only). The account (and this may be incorrect and may be subject to correction) is managed by Systems and new projects can be requested through a SYSHELP.

Lifehacker (a techie tools website) mentioned several tools that convert text files to audio, in mp3 or other formats. This is handy for teachers and others who may type notes for a presentation or a class and may not have time to then record themselves reading the notes. While the automatic voice won’t sound lively, it means students can have printable notes and audio notes that are easy for them to access and use and easy for teachers to create for multiple files (say all of the lecture notes for a course). While imperfect, this also helps by providing an easy way for teachers to offer multiple formats that benefit different learning styles.

Logan activated the Akismet spam blocker on all of the active blogs.

To further reduce spam problems, the blogs are set to only allow user accounts with UFLIB.ufl.edu or UFL.edu email addresses. In general, this should be fine and it makes it easier for us to manage the blogs for spam, possible hack attempts, and compliance with all campus IT policies. However, for special cases other email addresses may be needed. For instance, if the UF Libraries are hosting a blog for a State-wide committee and some of the members are at other universities or institutions, then the user account should go through the regular approval process and any potential concerns will be addressed at that time. The user account approval process exists to maintain and streamline processing, so please ask if you have any questions or concerns.

For administrators, changing the default allowable email configuration is under the options menu in the site admin section.