July 24, 2008
MBLWHOI Library Develops Taxonomy Toy
By Joseph Caputo
Cathy Norton may be on to something: Bioinformatics toys for scientists. Sure, they won’t be as popular as Super Soakers or Frisbees, but hers is a niche audience. Currently on the market is Taxatoy, a computer interface that lets users create customizable graphs to depict the number and variety of species discovered since 1750, when the Latin classification system developed by Carl Linnaeus began. (Using the program, one can learn that out of the nearly 2.3 million listed species, 31 are lobsters). The tool was developed by the Marine Biolgical Laboratory Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MBLWHOI) Library in 2007 and is now freely accessible online. http://www.mbl.edu/news/features/taxatoy.html [scb]

Are you interested in learning more about “microblogging” services like Twitter and FriendFeed? Perhaps you’ve heard about them and wondered if they had any application for the library. Join me for a 1-hour session online where I’ll demonstrate Twitter and FriendFeed as well as showing some examples of how libraries and other organizations are using these services to push information out to their patrons.

The session will be held online using Adobe Connect; all you need to participate is a web browser and a telephone. The session will be held on Thursday, September 18, from 1 - 2 pm Mountain Time, 2 - 3 pm Central Time. No sign up is required; please see the instructions below for participating.

If you can’t make the session, don’t worry; I will also be recording it for later viewing.

Class information:

Where: Online at https://webmeeting.nih.gov/psrsd/. On the day and time of the class, please go to this web address. Log in as Guest with your first and last name. There will be instructions in the meeting room for you to join the teleconference.

Description of class:

During this 1-hour session, participants will:

• Learn how to send and receive “Tweets” using Twitter clients
• Learn how to set up a FriendFeed page to push out information from a variety of services
• View and discuss examples of how library and other organizations are using microblogging.

No experience is required; however, I welcome others who have used these services to share your experiences with the class.

If you have questions, please contact Sharon Dennis at sdennis@lib.med.utah.edu. [SD]

You may have heard talk of a new browser that is being developed by Google. The browser is still in Beta, but is available for download. You can read about the browser features here and you can download it here.

I downloaded the new browser and tried it for about 30 minutes. I didn’t like it at first (probably just because it was different than what I was used to), and so I uninstalled it. However, I tried it again this past weekend, with a more open mind. Chrome has grown on me. I love the new Tab feature. When you click to open a new Tab, you are presented with a page that has thumbnail images of sites you visit most frequently. If one of those thumbnails is your intended destination, just click on the thumbnail, and you are taken directly to the web site.

When you install Chrome, you will be given the option to import bookmarks from your current browser. If, like me, you use both Firefox and Internet Explorer, the bookmarks from Firefox are imported by default. So, if you prefer one set of bookmarks over another, make sure to choose Additional Options during setup, which will let you specify bookmarks from IE.

If you have tried Chrome, and have discovered other features that you like, let me know…rbrown3@kumc.edu.
[rb]

Due to problems with the Adobe Connect server, the August 21 online class, “Microblogging Using Twitter and Friendfeed,” has been canceled. The class will be rescheduled for Thursday, September 18, from 1 - 2 p.m. MT, 2 - 3 p.m. CT. [SD]

Join me on September 30th at 11 CT for a 90 minute session to explore RSS: Really Simple Syndication. The session will be held online using Adobe Connect; all you need to participate is a web browser and a telephone (the phone call is free of charge).

To sign up for the class, contact Rebecca Brown (NN/LM Technology Liaison) at rbrown3@kumc.edu

Join me on September 30th at 11 CT for a 90 minute session to explore RSS: Really Simple Syndication. The session will be held online using Adobe Connect; all you need to participate is a web browser and a telephone (the phone call is free of charge).

To sign up for the class, contact Rebecca Brown (NN/LM Technology Liaison) at rbrown3@kumc.edu.