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.
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.