Monday 17 December 2012

That's All Folks!

So, all the Things have been posted on the Blog and we have come to the end of the programme. Thank you for taking part: the 12 Things team have enjoyed reading your blogs and we hope you have found the things interesting and useful.

But I haven't finished I hear you cry! Well, despair not: the 12 Things blog will not disappear, so carry on and work through the Things as and when you can.

However, if you wish to receive a certificate of completion, we ask that you complete all the Things - and blog about them - by the end of January 2013. The 12 Things team will start reviewing your blogs after then - remember if you don't blog about it we won't know you've done it!

As a final request, please blog a few lines about what you feel you have achieved by following 12 Things - has it been useful professionally and/or personally? Will it make a difference to your library service? What Thing have you enjoyed the most? What Thing has given you the biggest headache?!

Any questions or problems then please leave a comment, or contact a member of the team directly.

Merry Christmas!

12 Things EOE

Monday 3 December 2012

Thing 6 - controlling the web

Thing 6 is all about being in control - so that you can impose your system of order on the web to make it useful for you. We’ll be exploring bookmarking, tagging and personal startpages.

(a) Bookmarks

TASK 1 - browser vs MyLibrary vs delicious

There’s more than one way to manage your bookmarked/favourite websites.

Browser based bookmarks/favourites

Bookmarking your favourite websites is probably familiar to you.

Just to refresh you memory…
Find a website you like or find useful, and then…..

    Using Internet Explorer
  •  click the green plus/gold star button to “add to favourites”
  •  Name the favourite in a way that makes sense to you.
  •  Click add.
  •  To view the feed to check if there are any new items for you to read, click the gold star button, and pick the “favourites” column; alternatively, click “favourites” in the top menu bar.
  • You have the chance to organise your favourites into folders if you want to. Click “favourites” in the top menu bar, and click “organise your favourites”
OR

    Using Firefox,
  • Click the star in the address bar, this automatically adds it to your list of Bookmarks (notice it changes from clear to gold)
  • Click the star again, and you’re given the chance to name the bookmark in a way that makes sense to you, and to put it in a particular folder (depending on the way you’ve organised your bookmarks)
  • You also get the chance to tag the bookmark.
  • Click done or “remove this bookmark” as appropriate.
  • To view your bookmarks, click “bookmarks” and chose “recently bookmarked”

 

NHS MyLibrary bookmarking

Your NHS ATHENS password will also let you personalise the section MyLibrary. This works as an RSS reader (that you can use for Keeping Up To Date). It also has a bookmarking section, so that wherever you are, you can login to find the links to your favourite/most useful websites.
  • Go to http://www.evidence.nhs.uk - click the “journals and databases” link, and click “sign in to ATHENS” and login with your ATHENS password. Click to MyLibrary.
  • Look at the section marked My Links.
  • it’s already got some links which NHS Evidence thinks you might find useful, but if you don’t like these links, just tick the box and click “remove selected links”
  • Now it’s time for you to add some links which you do find useful.
  • Open a new web browser or tab, and find a website you find useful. Copy the address/URL.
  • Back in MyLibrary, click “Add Link”, and copy the URL in the appropriate box. (be careful to delete the existing http://)
  • Fill in the box marked “Link Title”, and click “add link”
  • Add a couple more links to other websites.

 

Extra Task: optional

Try adding categories to your links.

When you add a new link, complete the “category” box. When you add another new link, perhaps you will want to add the same category tag, or create a new category. It works like a system of folders.

So far, this method of bookmarking (or creating favourites) is a personal thing – only you can see them, whether that’s on the computer you are logged into, or on the basis of your ATHENS login, No one else can see them.

Social bookmarking services allow you to save or bookmark your favourite web sites online and to share them with others. Using a Social bookmarking service is like saving favourites to Internet Explorer or any other web browser but with added benefits:

Watch this video to see what is meant by social bookmarking (you'll need your headphones):


Delicious

  •  Sign up for a Delicious account at http://delicious.com/ This will require you to set up a Yahoo account.
  •  During the sign up process you will be given the option of downloading the Delicious “bookmarklet”. This is a useful button which sits in the “links” toolbar in Internet Explorer and other internet browsers and allows you to bookmark web sites to Delicious as you browse. Install it if you wish. If you're not sure you can always install it later.
  •  If you haven't used Delicious before, take a look through the information in “Help
  •  Save at least five of your favourite web sites as bookmarks and give each tags.
  •  If you have installed the Delicious "bookmarklet" you can save web sites to Delicious simply by visiting the web site you want to save and clicking in your links toolbar.
  •  If you haven't installed the "bookmarklet", log on to your Delicious account and click "Save New Bookmark" (top right) you will then have to enter the URL of the page you want to save followed by its title and tags.
  •  Save your blog and/or another web site on the theme of web 2.0 as a bookmark. Add tags and this time also include the “12thingsbeforexmas” tag so that other members of the programme can find the bookmark.
  •  Choose “Tags” / “Explore” and search for the tag “12thingsbeforexmas” to view bookmarks shared by other member of the programme. Save any pages that look interesting to your own Delicious account.

Extra Task: optional

a. Read about tagging and folksonomies by searching using the Delicious search. This searches all the public bookmarks saved on Delicious. Save any pages that look interesting to your own Delicious account (don’t forget to share them using the 12thingsbeforexmas tag as well as some of your own tags).

b. Send a bookmark to another user by adding their delicious username to the “send” field. (If you don’t know anyone using Delicious you can send a bookmark to me: ilk21@cam.ac.uk).

(b) Tagging


Tag (metadata)             
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia         
A tag cloud with terms related to Web 2.0
In information systems, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system.


Tagging should come naturally to librarians. Tagging blog entries, photos on facebook, bookmarks on delicious etc is how the social web organises its information. As library staff, we know that retrieving information can be a pretty complex task, and that the more access points a record offers, the more chance there is that a reader will find it.

Tags are the access points of Web 2.0: they work in the same way as NLM Subject Headings, or MeSH. The difference is that they're generated on the fly by users, not imposed by library taxonomies.

Tagging is designed to be both personal - you choose which tags you want to use - and collaborative - others can see the tags you've assigned, and can choose to follow you in using them. Of course this doesn't always happen! One person's "cat" may be another's "feline quadruped": unlike NLM, there are no right and wrong ways of tagging.

Some people find this idea inspiring; to others, it's opening the door to anarchy. Yet tagging is perhaps the defining element of web 2.0's user-generated content, and it's not going to go away. This in turn is going to have a profound effect on our readers' expectations of how information is described and retrieved.

An interesting way to use tagging comes with Twitter - by adding hashtags (eg #12thingseoe) to your tweets you can follow tweets about the same topic, even if you don’t follow the person doing the tweeting. This is particularly useful, I find, when there’s a conference or meeting that I can’t attend but would find interesting.

If you’re a Twitter novice you can find about a bit more about what it is and why it might be useful here: http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=979
If you’re up for a few more hints and tips this http://www.squidoo.com/twitter4librarians might be useful, and if you want a way of joining in, try http://uklibchat.wordpress.com/ for topical discussions.

(c) pulling it all together - personal homepage

Since you’ve already seen MyLibrary, accessible via your NHS ATHENS login, you’ve got a picture of what a personal homepage can look like. If you’ve got a Google account, you’re maybe already familiar with iGoogle - but enjoy that while it lasts since iGoogle will be discontinued in 2013. What a personal homepage, or personal startpage, can give you is all your favourite and useful links and feeds in one place. Both these resources are private - no one else can see the resources you pull together.

As an alternative to both MyLibrary and iGoogle, you could consider NetVibes as a way of having a private space, and the option for a public facing homepage. Like iGoogle there’s an option to have lots of pages (or tabs) that focus on different things, and there’s the chance to add in fun or useful widgets.

Have a look at http://www.netvibes.com/sathlibraries#About It’s an NHS library service that has created a public website that pulls together tools and resources relevant for a range of different subject areas. It contains lists of useful links, and RSS feeds, all in one place.It’s a quick and easy way to create a public webpage. Here’s another example: http://www.netvibes.com/northantspslibraries
My own netvibes page (http://www.netvibes.com/ilk21#General ) is a bit messy, but it works for me - there’s also a private side which I’m not showing you, which is available to me when I login.

Does this look useful to you, or to your library? What feeds, bookmarks and widgets would you pull together for yourself, or for library users? If you library website is not on the internet, perhaps you could build a public page that clinicians could access from home.

your thing

- blog about how you could see these tools being used by your library or library users

Monday 19 November 2012

Thing 5 - Referencing

Zotero or Mendeley

When I wrote my masters dissertation I typed out my bibliography reference by reference. I worked through the whole text too, slotting in the references, remembering where I’d referenced the same thing twice – the whole 15,000 words of it.
from quinnanya on flickr

I don’t say this in a “we had it tough back in my day, you lot, you don’t know you’re born” sort of way. I say it because I didn’t have any alternative (that I was aware of).  It was time consuming and error prone – who would chose that?
There are so many tools out there these days that there’s no reason for anyone -  student, academic, researcher, would-be librarian  – anyone to have to do that anymore.  
For those of us still in the throes of writing essays, or perhaps writing articles for professional journals, picking one piece of software and running with it makes life a lot easier. But looking beyond our own needs to consider the needs of the library users we support, being aware of a number of different tools is always an advantage (and a big selling point on a CV). Being able to explore the pros and cons of different ways of achieving the same goal helps others decide which is the tool for them.

Managing information in this way, and helping others to do so too demonstrates our worth in a new way, and is a very useful skill. We’re not just there to help people find information, we can help them manage it to more easily achieve their goal. (I’m mostly thinking of these tools in an academic or research environment, but please give me examples their use in public libraries, business  information centres – anywhere!)

There are 4 essential elements that you need in any reference management system. The ability to:
  • import references from a number of different sources (eg websites, library catalogues, bibliographic databases etc)
  • manage and/or edit the references once they’re in the system, and add manually any references that you cannot find online
  • export references into the document that you’re writing, either as a single bibliography, or individually, often called “cite while you write” which generates a list of references.
  • format the bibliography according the referencing style of your choice, and re-format if/when necessary

There are some other “bells and whistles” which might be nice. The ability to:
  • share references with colleagues, supervisors, co-authors
  • attach the text of the article to the reference (as a PDF attachment mostly), so you can manage the full-text documents as well as the references
  • find full text of the articles in your list of references (particularly relevant in academic libraries)
  • manage your full-text articles- perhaps by ensuring that file names are consistent,
  • detect and delete duplicates - if an article is important, you may find it more than once - but you don’t want more than one entry in your list of references.

There are many commercial products out there – Endnote, Reference Manager, RefWorks and Papers  are just 4 examples. Those of us working in higher education may already have access to one or more of these. But there are also some tools which are available open source - free in the first instance, although with option to pay for more storage/services. These are accessible to anyone (so long as you’ve got the rights to download software onto your computer!)
There’s a comparison table in Wikipedia and Martin Fenner produced a useful comparison between 8 different tool.

Of the many possibles, we’re going to look at 2 free ones:

Zotero and Mendeley


NB - these tools will require you to download plugins etc to your desk top.

Thing A -  Zotero – www.zotero.org

Zotero is an open source product that started life as a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox but in its 3.0 version is now available as a standalone desktop tool which is compatible with Chrome and Safari, as well as a plugin for your Firefox browser.
A useful video which demonstrates Zotero is available and rather than re-invent the wheel, I suggest you watch this.
Zotero is free, but you can get extra storage space and more flexibility for a monthly subscription if you need it.
I think it’s a great - a simple to use product which allows easy importing of references from a lot of sources – just by a click of an icon that will appear in your URL bar. Check if the ones you use regularly are covered: http://www.zotero.org/translators
Zotero also encourages collaboration by providing a social networking element to their site - you can create groups ( private or public) where you can share your reference lists - a bit like delicious.
The standalone desktop tool will also let you organise the PDFs that you might have gathered up already - so you can start managing your references now even if you’ve had no system previously.
Zotero has a plugin for MS Word too - so you can “cite while you write”.
To ensure a back-up of your references (to save tears if your computer crashes!) you can synchronise your Zotero system to the Zotero website - I would recommend doing this on a regular basis to ensure least disaster if anything should go wrong.

Thing B – Mendeley – www.mendeley.com



Mendeley also requires a download, but this time it’s a desktop feature only, rather the forcing you to use one particular browser.  Like Zotero, there is a free version of Mendeley, but more features and increased storage are available if you chose to subscribe.
There’s some great introductory videos available, plus loads of supporting documentation.

One of the nicest features, is that if you’re starting off with a desktop or folder full of PDFs, there is a “watched folder” feature that you can point Mendeley towards, and it extracts metadata from the PDF files and populates your Mendeley library automatically. This is great if you/your library user has a great morass of files they want to organise retrospectively - and I’ve never seen a room of researchers go quiet so quickly as when you show them this feature, plus the one that renames the files in a tidy and consistent way (really very impressive!)

There’s also a PDF editor function within Mendeley, so you can “scribble” on the full-text articles (though you can get this functionality without by using PDF-XChange)
Mendeley has the added bonus that when you synch your desktop with the web version of Mendeley - a good thing to do since it acts as a back-up for all your references - the PDF (if you’ve attached it) will go into the cloud too, so you can access your full-text articles wherever you are.
The group/social networking function in Mendeley takes things a step further, by allowing you to set up a closed group where collabators can share the full-text articles, not just the references.

There is, of course, a “cite while you write” plug in to install for Word, and you can pick one of many many different referencing styles to make your bibliography beautiful.

Mendeley also has a very nice iPad or iPhone app which means you can always keep up with your reading and keep adding to your reference list.

Your Thing

For this week’s Thing, I’d like you to explore, and watch the videos for these two reference managers. If you have the rights to download software to your computer, then have a play with at least one of them.
Reflect on how these tools might help the people who use your library - why might they find them useful? Perhaps you’re working towards chartership, or are writing essays for a course you’re on - how could a reference management tool help you achieve some of your own goals?

If you’re already using one or several of these tools - perhaps for your own work, or perhaps purely in order to teach others how to use them, please share it. How are you using them? Do you have a preference? If you are running courses, who are they for? What format do these courses take? Does this service help to change perceptions of the library service?

Monday 5 November 2012

Thing 4 - Presentations

 

Hello,

Welcome back! We hope you enjoyed your week off and are looking forward to completing the rest of the "12 Things".

This fortnight we will be getting creative and will be exploring tools that allow you to create and share presentations, documents and other files online. We will also be looking at ways to visually enhance presentations etc using video and photographic images. Whilst you are exploring this Thing, think about how these tools could be used to best effect in your work.

Task 1 - What is Slideshare?

Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net is a presentation hosting website that also allows you to share documents, PDFs etc.

Why might you, researchers or clinicians want to use Slideshare?

  • To share presentations with anyone who might not get to see it otherwise, eg for people unable to attend a conference. Slideshare presentations can easily be embedded into your blog, website, Twitter or Facebook.
  • To share and disseminate ideas or reach a wider audience. This could include engaging with the public and on a massive scale.
  • To invite comments and fedback and so get new ideas to develop their work or make their presentations better.
  • To make international contacts and network with people with similar work interests.
  • To download presentations and re-use or re-mix them.
How do I get started?

First of all, you will need to create an account:

  • Go to http://www.slideshare.net/signup then fill in the registration form.
  • The next screen will probably be some general information about Slideshare - don't worry about this, carry on to the next step.
  • Now upload your first presentation! Lots of file formats are supported, including Powerpoint formats, Keynote, Open Office and pdf. After skipping the advert for Pro, you should see this box:


  • If you don't see this, click on the orange "upload" button at the top of the page and this will bring you here. As with most Web 2.0 applications there is a free version and a premium version, which has more features. Slideshare Pro, for example, allows you to share your presentations privately as well as publicly. If you click on the blue button, you will just get an invitation to upgrade to Slideshare Pro. Skip this, the free service provides all the features we need right now.
  • Click on the orange button and upload a presentation or video. While the file is being uploaded and converted you can give it a name, description and tags:

Once the file has uploaded you can then share it on Twitter, Facebook or email, embed in your blog or simply insert the link wherever you wnat to share it.

Of course you can browse Slideshare to find interesting presentations by other people. try searching for "libraries" or "social media" or whatever else you're interested in!

Other things you can do with Slideshare:
  • Favourite the presentations you like to save them to your Slideshare account (the favourite button is on the bar along the top of each presentation). Or, if the author has allowed this, download them to your computer.
  • Import a presentation from Google Docs.
  • You can add comments and tags to your own presentations.
Your Thing - Task 1 - Try searching for presentations on Slideshare and upload a presentation (it doesn't have to be long or partcularly spiffy) and either sharing the link or embedding it on your blog. Have a browse of the other presentations on Slideshare and share anything interesting!

NB. Remember to consider copyright rules if including images or screenshots in your presentation.

Task 2 - What is Prezi?

Prezi is a free web-based package so you can create your presentation online but can download it for use offline. In some ways it is like Powerpoint and, in any situation where you might consider using a Powerpoint, you can create a Prezi instead. What makes Prezi so good though is the extra capabilities it has, that can take your presentation beyond the boring 'slide with text, next slide with text, slide with text and a picture' format of most powerpoints.

Have a look at this Prezi from Ned Potter which gives a good video demo:
http://prezi.com/_sto8qf_0vcs/the-how-to-make-a-great-prezi-prezi/

With the standard version all slides are automatically made public so you need to take into account copyright rules if including images or screenshots in your presentation. This makes it more suited to some uses than others, eg. you need to be careful about copyrighted images.

As with Slideshare, Prezi presentations can be shared, downloaded and re-worked by others, you can post comments or upload audio files to accompany your presentation. You can also collaborate online with other authors to create a Prezi together, and you can download it and play it offline if you need to present on a computer with no internet access.

Why might you, researchers, or clinicians want to use Prezi?

Many of the reasons to do with sharing and disseminating presentations are similar to those for Slideshare. In addition Prezi provides an alternative format for presentations, and allows collaborative working.

How do I get started?
  • Go to http://prezi.com and click 'sign up' on the top right. You'll need to create a free account to use the programme.
  • When Prezi opens, there are three tabs at the top of the page - 'Your Prezis' will display all the presentations you have created. 'Learn' offers tutorials on using Prezi, at both a basic and more advanced level. 'Explore' allows you to view other presentations on all manner of subjects - a great way to get an idea of how Prezi can be used (and perhaps what not to do as well).
  • To start your first presentation click on the 'New Prezi' button on the top left of the 'Your Prezi' tab. You'll be prompted to give the presentation a title, and a description, but these can be changed later, so don't worry too much.
  • You'll then be offered a number of templates to choose from. I would advise not selecting any of these until you have mastered the basics of Prezi and know the effect you are trying to create so select the blank template.
  • Now click on the canvas and type to get started. You can add pictures (try using Flickr with Creative Commons licensing) and you can link to You Tube videos. With the standard version all slides are automatically made public so you will need to remember to take into account copyright rules if including images or screenshots in your presentation.

The tools can take a little bit of getting used to, particularly sizing and the animation. And be aware that your first attempt is likely to be fairly poor. So practise a bit if you like it before trying to use Prezi for a presentation. The biggest tip is perhaps not to get too carried away with all the features you could use, particularly with the animation - don't underestimate the ability to create a rather seasick effect.

Your Thing - Task 2. Try searching for presentations in Prezi that might be of interest to a researcher or clinician in the fields of biomedicine or health (or a subject relevant to your role) to see what kind of presentations are out there. If you are feeling advanturous, try uploading/downloading a presentation, or creating one from scratch - the Prezi Manual has good instructions on getting started.

Task 3 - What is YouTube?

YouTube http://www.youtube.com is probably the best known and biggest video sharing website. Anyone can search and play videos on YouTube but to upload them you need to create a free account. You can then rate and comment on videos, store them in your favourites, crate playlists and subscribe to particular 'channels'.

Tip: YouTube Channels - every author on YouTube has their own 'channel' which is effectively their homepage with links to their videos, favourites and details of their activity. To view someone's 'channel' just click on their name below a video they have authored.

Many of the reasons why academics, researchers or clinicians might want to use YouTube are the same reasons we discussed when we were sharing presentations via Slideshare or Prezi. These include:

  • For research purposes, to find videos of interest to their discipline.
  • To share their work and obtain a larger audience, such as for public engagement or to invite comment from their peers, eg. posting videos of lectures.
Your Thing - Task 3. Have a browse on YouTube for videos that might be of interest to our user groups. There are some great library related YouTube videos which are also worth a look - here is one to get you started:



YouTube isn't the only video sharing site. Flickr and Google Video are other options you might like to try.

Task 4 - Flickr & Creative Commons

Using photos to pep up your presentations is another good way to make them come alive. Flickr http://www.flickr.com is undoubtedly the best known photo sharing website, containing over 5 billion images which you can view and download and can also be used for shaing videos. If you want to re-use images you find on Flickr you need to check the license as some images require you to request permission from the copyright owner or author of the photo. If you search using the Advanced Search you can restrict your search to items licensed under Creative Commons http://www.creativecommons.org.uk a licensing scheme designed for the sharing capabilities of social media, and can easily identify images that allow you to re-use or even re-work the images. Flickr includes a page that explains the different licences and in many cases you'll be able to re-use an image if you include an attribution to the author.

Flickr is not the only image sharing site available. You might also want to check out Picasa web albums (from Google) and Photobucket.

Your Thing - Task 4. Write a post on you blog about your experiences exploring Slideshare, Prezi, YouTube and Flickr. You might want to consider some of the following points:

  • How easy are they to use?
  • Do you think thay are a useful tool for the user groups we are considering?
  • What might be the issues or concerns that people might have if making their presentations publicly available through these tools? Could plagiarism and the stealing of other people's work be an issue? Are there any copyright issues? (You might want to explore the support or help sections on the websites for more information about copyright).
Congratulations on completing Thing 4. We hope you enjoyed it. Thing 5 is all about Controlling the Web and will be posted on the 19th November.



Monday 15 October 2012

Thing 3 - Working Collaboratively


Hello,

Hopefully by now you will be getting to grips with blogging and keeping yourself very well-informed via RSS feeds and Twitter.

This fortnight we’re going to focus on tools that not only allow you to share, but allow you to collaborate on a piece of work.You may find these useful if you are working on projects with colleagues within your own Trust or in other libraries. Whilst you are exploring this Thing, have a think about ways in which this could be useful for your library users.

Thing 3 - Group Projects

Wikis

Wikis are the most obvious example of a Web 2.0 tool that allows people to collaborate on a piece of work. The word 'wiki' comes from a Hawaiian word meaning 'fast'. A wiki is a webpage that can be edited by anyone or a defined set of people from within the Web browser, no other editing tools are required. As it's all stored online and they often allow you to upload documents and other files, they can be a useful tool for groups collaborating on a piece of work.
The best known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, where anyone can go in and add or amend an entry and anyone can see the entries you have made. The lack of editorial control can make the information in Wikipedia unreliable so they have editorial guidance in place to try to ensure the quality of the entries and you can look back to see what changes have been made to a page. For some pages editorial control is restricted to registered users or even particular individuals. If you are setting up your own wiki you can usually set it to allow only certain people to access it and/or edit it.

Wiki software is available to download to your PC or you can use an online wiki tool. Freely available online wiki tools include WikiSpaces (which offers free spaces for higher education), WetPaint and PBWorks. There are lots more examples out there. You might like to explore WikiMatrix, which is a site that compares wiki sites.

Why use wikis?

But aren't wikis a bit 'old-hat' now? All very 2005/2006?

We've got Twitter and blogs now. Aren't they the Web 2.0 tools of choice?

It could be said that blogging software has replaced wikis - it's more intuitive, easier to set up and customise. But wikis can still be a useful way of storing documents that are linked in linear and non-linear ways and in enabling collaboration.
  • Wikis are really great for managing project documentation. Especially projects which generate a lot of reports, minutes of meetings, plans and timetables. A project wiki is a great repository for all that information, enabling all members of the team, wherever they are located, to read, edit and upload all the material at a glance. Documents can easily be shuffled around and archived. A wiki discussion is much easier to retrieve and organise than an email thread.
  • I am a member of a wiki used by our east of England Health Information Skills Group (EEHIST) which was set up using PBWorks. We use it to store the Minutes of our meetings, drafts of our training guides, our action Plan and to discuss issues of importance to this group. Each member receives an email when a new thread (discussion) or document has been added or edited on the wiki.
  • Staff Intranet Several university libraries use wiki software to manage their staff intranet. The wiki operates as a content management system, combining both publicly available and restricted access documents.
  • Staff Manual If you want to produce a document with multiple sections that you'd like staff to be able to edit or comment on, with those changes being tracked, a wiki might be the answer.
There are of course issues involved in allowing open editing of a wiki. In general, users are much more likely to add a comment to a blog post or perhaps offer a guest post than they are to edit a wiki page. It's perhaps easier to see how teachers might use wikis collaboratively, where students are obliged to contribute.

Wikis are still a great medium for archiving and publishing large quantities of documents, no matter how you obtained them.



Why might researchers, academics and clinicians want to use wikis?
  • As with sharing social media tools, wikis can be used to share and disseminate ideas or reach a wider audience, to engage with the public, to invite comments and feedback.
  • To invite other people to contribute their knowledge on a topic – ‘crowd sourcing’.
  • For open peer review of articles.
  • To invite updates for systematic reviews.
  • To provide online collaborative portals of data, information or other resources in a particular field which may be used as reference sources.
  • For sharing and developing educational materials.
  • As a forum for debate and discussion, and a place to keep a record of discussions.
  • To facilitate group work on projects by their students, increase student engagement or have students read and review the work of their peers.

Your Thing Task 1 : See if you can find any examples of wikis that might be of use to our user groups: academics, researchers, students or clinicians. You could try searching Google, searching the websites of HE institutions, or searching the literature for articles about good examples, or finding them any other way you can. If you find other good ways to identify wiki examples, why not share this information on your blog?

Google Docs/Google Drive

Google docs is an example of an Office 2.0 tool. Office 2.0 refers to online applications that allow you to create documents, spreadsheets etc. Instead of using software installed on your individual computer you are using software that is hosted in a remote ‘cloud’. This means you don’t need to be on your own computer to access your files, you just need a computer with an Internet connection. You also don’t need to worry about software upgrades and because everything is available over the Internet it facilitates sharing and collaboration.

The downsides can be that these applications currently have limited functionality compared to Microsoft Office, for example, and you are dependent on a decent Internet connection to access your files.

Google Docs (recently changed to Google Drive) allows you to share and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings online. You can create them from scratch in Google Docs or upload them and amend them in Google Docs. This can be really useful for people who work in different departments or even different institutions who are collaborating on a piece of work and need to work on documents together.The authors of this course put together the whole course and shared it with each other via Google docs.

Other office 2.0 alternatives include Think Free Office and  Zoho Office Suite.


Scheduling meetings or events

Researchers often work in groups and may wish to arrange meetings, decide on deadlines or inform each other about conferences or other relevant events. Clinicians may have similar requirements if working together, for example to discuss a particular case or work on an audit or guideline. Social media tools are there to help us again. Here are some examples you might like to explore, although there are many others out there:
  • Google calendar: As with many Google products, probably the lead player in this area. Lets you share your calendar with anyone, and invite people to events in your calendar.
  • Doodle: A free tool for scheduling events between a group of people. It works by creating a poll which is sent out to the people you want to meet with by email. They then respond to the poll so you can select the most popular date and time.
  • Meet-o-matic: Another free meeting scheduler that uses a simple web-form and emails people to ask them to select a preferred date and time.

Your Thing Task 2: Have a go at creating a document and then sharing it with a colleague via Google Drive.
  • You have already created a Google account, so just sign in to your account and select Drive
  • Click on create and either write from scratch or copy and paste an existing Word document
  • Click on share and type the email address of the person you want to share it with

 Don't forget to blog about your experiences!

Thanks for completing Thing 3. The week beginning 29th October will be a Reflective Week and no Thing will be posted. This gives you an opportunity to reflect (and blog about) the Things you have encountered so far, or to catch up if you have fallen a little behind.

The next thing will be posted on 5th November. Enjoy your week off and remember to keep blogging!

Monday 1 October 2012

Thing 2: Keeping Up to Date Part 3

This is Part 3 of Thing 2: Keeping up to Date. If you have not yet looked at Part 1: RSS and Part 2: Twitter, please do so before completing this section.

Alerts

Firstly, alerts to new journal articles.

Some journals are on Twitter and if you joined Twitter, an easy way to keep up to date with new content, editorials etc, is to follow them.

A few to get you started:
Of course, now you also know about RSS, you can set up RSS alerts to journal titles, either from publishers homepage or by using JournalTOCS.




JournalTOCS

JournalTOCS is a free current awareness service provided by Herriot Watt University, and since the NHS no longer have access to ZETOC it provides a good alternative.

JournalTOCS allows you to set up either RSS feeds or email alerts to journal titles or subject searches.
Go to http://www.journaltocs.ac.uk/ and register for a free account by using the link at the top right of the screen.

Once registered you can search for journals using the search box on the home page. 

 From your search results, tick the check box next to a title to follow it, or click on the title itself to see the contents and have the option to subscribe using RSS.



To subscribe to the RSS feed, click the orange RSS logo and add the feed to your Google Reader.
Click on the orange RSS logo to subscribe to feed

Add more journals as you wish using the search or browse features.

View the journals you have selected (and deselect if needed) by hovering the mouse over your name in the top right corner, and clicking on “Followed Journals”.

You can also set up email or RSS alerts to keyword searches. Again use the search box on the home page, but make sure “for articles by keywords” is selected.

Follow # on Twitter
You can also keep up with information across the web generally. Again, Twitter (if you choose to use it) is good for this. You can follow the hashtag for a subject you are interested in. This is particularly useful for following conferences or meetings you have not been able to attend in person. You can also search for a subject and save that search. So for example, you may wish to be updated of any mentions of your hospital or library service on Twitter. Use the search box to search by keyword, and then click the “cog” at the top right of the results to save. You may save up to 25 searches in Twitter.  To access your saved searches just click again in the search box and a list will appear.








 Google Alerts
Finally, you can set up Google alerts to keep up to date with a topic.
Click More on the Google homepage, and select “Even More”. On the next page scroll down to Alerts (under specialised search).



Type in your search query, and select where you want google to search (e.g. everything or just blogs etc) and how often you want to be updated. Add your email address and click Create Alert.

Click Manage your Alerts to see what you have created and delete as necessary.

Your Thing: Task 4
Your final task for Keeping up to date is to write a short blog post on your experience of using JournalTocs / RSS / Twitter as a means of keeping up to date with journal articles. Do you use any of these methods already? Do you have a preferred method?

How helpful do you think Google Alerts will be? 

Do you use any other methods to keep yourself up to date?


We hope your have enjoyed Thing 2. Remember to write an entry for your blog as you complete each task. Thing 3, Working Collaboratively,  will be posted on 15th October.