Rich's Random Thoughts

I’m happy to see that Microsoft is finally getting into the on line office market. There is nothing better for inovation than competition between two companies with a lot of money, and a lot of smart employees. I’ve been a heavy user of the Google Docs wordprocessor and spreadsheet apps since 2006.  The Google Docs apps are not as powerful as the desktop Microsoft Office programs, but now have enough features that I have almost stopped using Microsoft Office desktop products.  The thing that drew me to Google Docs in the first place was it’s excellent collaboration features, like real time multi-user document editing and a strong version control system – all essential features for college students.

Here are my thoughts on Microsoft Word Web App (live.office.com). Before you test drive it yourself, you’ll need an active hotmail.com or live.com account.

Word Web App Pros:

• The look and feel of the Word Web App is very similar to Word 2007.  Similar, but not as many features, which is to be expected at this point in it’s product development. If you use Word 2007 you have a very small learning curve.
• Sharing a document with others is easy to do.  Having the document on the internet makes collaboration simple… no more worrying about whether or not you have the most recent version in your email inbox or not.
• The built in version control looks solid.  It is now a trivial task to revert the document back to an earlier version if necessary, or see what was deleted by accident.
• 25GB of file storage is excellent. I’m not sure what the limite is in Google Docs to be honest.
• You can edit documents in any web browser, not just Internet Explorer.  I’ve been working in Google Chrome on a Mac, and the experience has been good.

Word Web App Cons:

• No printing.  This is huge.  You cannot print unless you open your document in the desktop version of Microsoft Word, or a compatible word processer like OpenOffice.  I can understand that they still want people to buy their desktop version of Office, but not being able to print makes Google Docs look very good.
• No footnotes or endnotes. For students this is a problem.  You can add footnotes and endnotes in the desktop version of Word, but you can’t edit them or even see them in the online version.  Hopefully this will change soon, as this is a big problem for students who need to cite their references.  Google Docs started out without footnotes, but added them in October of 2008.
• While you can edit documents just fine in any web browser, if you want to edit the file in your desktop version of Word you need to be on a Windows computer in Internet Explorer.  Not a huge deal, unless you need to add footnotes, or want an easy way to print.

Whether you end up using Microsoft Office Web Apps, or Google Docs, we’re all going to benefit from Microsoft getting into this market.  Overall this is a good first effort from Microsoft.  Hopefully they’ll quickly add printing and footnotes to their otherwise excellent product.

Here’s a short Google Apps video that shows how useful real time collaboration on a document can be… no more emailing a document back and forth between collaborators:

Here’s a link to the outline of the Mobile Computing Discussion I’m leading today at the UVic Libraries.  Once I’ve cleaned up the notes, I’ll post them below:

Reading List for Mobile Computing and the iPad Discussion:

• Reminders From Out of the Blue [please take note of the location features] – David Pogue
• Urbanspoon iPhone App Adds Augmented Reality – Barb Bybwad
• QR codes for libraries – some thoughts – Aaron Tay
• Evernote for iPhone – Jeffery Battersby
• Looking at the iPad From Two Angles – David Pogue
• What are mobile friendly library sites offering? A survey. – Aaron Tay
• Amazon.com’s Kindle fails first college test – Amy Martinez

Read more…

I work in a law library, but I can quite imagine our librarians doing a remix of a Lady Gaga song called “Catalog” (aka Poker Face).  You really have to be up on your library terminology to get what the reworked lyrics are saying.  The students and librarians at the University of Washington Information School did a great job!  Enjoy!

Introduction to the Survey Results

In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic law students over the past seven years, we decided to ask some extra questions about the increasing important mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with.  One major change to the methodology of this survey compared to past years is that we sent the survey to all students at the law school, not just first year students.  The response rate was 25% this year rather than close to 100% in previous years.

[Note: if you have problems seeing any graphs on this page, please look at the underlying Google Doc's page for this blog post]

Executive Summary:

• 30% of students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet.
• 97% of students own laptops, and over 60% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 39% of student laptops are Mac’s.
• The average laptop price dropped to $1,200 from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• All students now report having high speed internet in their homes.
• 82% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 86% of students own MP3 players capable of listening to recorded lectures.
• 54% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 18% use UVic email and 15% Hotmail.
• 58% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing.  27% chose Google Docs, 5% OpenOffice Writer & 10% “Other”.
• 100% of students now have access to high speed internet at their homes.
• 86% of students use Facebook and 65% of those students would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar of events.

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You may have noticed the new sign outside the Law Library computer lab with the funky looking bar code on it (a QR Code).  What does it do?  It allows our patrons who have a smart phone (like an iPhone or BlackBerry) to download a free application (NeoReader), and then take a picture of the bar code with that app… The app then launches their smart phone’s web browser and takes them to the room schedule page so that they can see when the lab is booked for classes.  While this is useful, it hopefully will be a lot more useful once we are using the Main UVic Library’s room booking system, so that students will be able to check the availability of a room, and then book it from their cell phone while standing in front of the room.

This is just a trial to see what sort of uptake we get from students, and how helpful they find it. Some other possible uses for this technology in the library are:

• Study room availability and room booking as I already mentioned.
• Library tours – posters in different areas of the library with the bar codes so that students can access information relevant to that particular space. Audio tours can also be provided this way.
• Library Maps – Instead of just a map that has, Reference, Reserve, Computer Lab on it, put QR codes for each area that has a web page, so that the patron can go directly to that web page for more information.
• SMS reference service via a 2D bar code on the library web site.
• Library Reviews – if someone has done a review on a book or item, a bar code can be put on that item, linking to the review.
• Event Posters – if there is a web page associated with an event, a bar code linking to that web page can be put on the poster.
• Link to Phone number on a web page so people don’t have to dial the number on their phone.

While installing the bar code scanner app on an iPhone is quite easy, it remains to be seen how many students have a smart phone capable of reading the bar codes, and how many of those students will actually find this useful. I just sent a survey out to law students, asking in part what cell phone they use, so we should have some good data on the number of students who have a device that can read the 2D bar codes in a week or two.

I have also spoken briefly with Ben Naylor about how the LSS might find this technology useful in their communications with students.  If multiple organizations in the Fraser building begin to use it, and enough students have cell phones that can read the 2D bar codes, we can hopefully make all our lives a little bit easier.

If you want to create a 2D bar code, here is a link to a free QR Code Generator that anyone can use.  Let me know if you have any other ideas on how we could use this technology!

I spoke to a local Rotary club recently on topic of - Google vs. the Library: Research & Collaboration in the 21st Century. The group wanted to know if Google and the Internet would be putting our libraries out of business.  My answer?  Yes and No (see the link above for more details).

Yes, Google and the internet (specifically Wikipedia) have already put libraries out of the business of providing basic reference material.

No, Google and the internet will not put libraries out of the business of lending books in the short run.  More importantly, Libraries for the foreseeable future will the the primary conduit for most people to access high quality and expensive research databases like Pub Med and other walled off online journals.

One interesting factoid from the presentation: The Encyclopedia Britannica contains about 100,000 articles and costs over $1,000 for a set of books. Wikipedia has over 3,000,000 articles and is completely free.  Wikipedia is 30 times larger than Britannica, and is widening it’s lead on a daily basis.

For now the Goliath vs. David battle is a draw

The British Museum and the BBC have teamed up to create a website that presents the world’s history via objects (in digital form of course) contained in the British Museum.  The site is called: A History of the World.  BBC Raido will be broadcasting shows that discuss items on the website and point people to the site in case they would like to explore further.  There will also be a CBBC 13 part series that will looks at relics that are part of the collection.

I’ve always thought that a big part of the future of both libraries and museums will be in digitizing the unique portions of their collections and then make those digital object available to the world.  What the BBC and the British museum have done, is create an excellent interface for people to browse their collection online, which make it much more accessible than it could ever be in a brick and mortar building.

I should probably get more involved in the digitization projects going on at the University of Victoria Libraries where I work!

Notes from an address by James Duderstadt, President Emeritus, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
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Meeting End User Needs
Rich McCue, July 9, 2004

Over the past year or so I’ve had a few ideas bouncing around my head about libraries and the long term direction they should be heading in. Some of these ideas have come from conferences I’ve attended, others from articles. The “2003 OCLC Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition” brought a lot of those ideas together for me. Below are some quotes from the report and my thoughts on them.
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