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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Free Online Courses

One of the quickest ways of enhancing professional practices via the Internet is by running self-taught free online short courses. But you may wonder how could one get such courses? Very simple...
  1. Visit Youtube.com and enjoy free lectures - but there is the problem of bandwidth for professionals in the third world. Search through Google, there are about 558,000
  2. Visit any social bookmarks. My favourite is Delicious.com. Check out some of the ones I got. How? I visited www.delicous.com. Conducted a search using the following keywords: free online courses. That is it!
  3. You could also try out Google search on the same keywords. The result is huge! (122,000,000)
  4. Here is another search results (99,000,000) using the following keywords: Free OR open courses
  5. Any other trick?

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

List of Hottest Keeping-up Professional Sites

Keeping up with professional news is not an easy task, but there are many sites out there providing all kinds of information that are of value to professional librarians. Please find a list of some of the hottest I have found to be very useful in recent years. The list will continue to grow with time:
  1. Resourceshelf * RSS * Updates by Email * Unsubscribe * Contact
    Great source for current publications. "A daily newsletter with resources of interest to information professionals, educators and journalists."

  2. Librarian in Black * About * RSS Updates by Email * Presentations * Contact
    Great source for conference reports and discovery of new resources.

  3. iLibrarian * About * RSS * Contact
    Good source for discovery of new tools. "News and resources on Library 2.0 and the information revolution."

  4. Library Stuff * About * RSS * Contact & Presentations
    "The library weblog dedicated to resources for keeping current and professional development"

  5. Librarians Matter * About * RSS * Presentations * Updates by Email * Contact
    Lots of videos of tutorials and downloadable conference reports.

  6. Blog for Library Technology * About * RSS
    "Food for thought for library technologists"

  7. The Other Librarian * About * RSS
    Nice place to glean the new tools
  8. ACRLog * About * RSS * Updates
    "Blogging by and for Academic and Research Librarians"
  9. beSpacific * About * RSS * Updates by Email
    "Accurate, Focused Law and Technology News"
  10. Digital Reference * RSS * Bookmarks
    "News and views on chat reference, IM reference, email reference, VoIP reference, video reference, SMS reference, phone reference, roving reference, and face-to-face reference."
  11. Information Wants To Be Free * About * RSS * Presentations * Contact
    "A librarian, writer and tech geek reflecting on the profession and the tools we use to serve our patrons"
  12. Open Access News * About * RSS * Updates by Email * Articles * Blogroll
    News from the open access movement
  13. Davil Lee King * About * RSS * Updates by Email * Presentations * Bookmarks
    "social web - emerging trends - libraries"

Saturday, October 17, 2009

20 EASY TOOLS FOR PROFESSIONALS WITH LOW BANDWIDTH

In developing countries, one of the major challenges confronting Library and Information Professionals (LIPs) is the low bandwidth. Sometime you want to do a simple search and you just discovered that the Internet connection is vey low. I have discovered over time that some websites and search engines have portable sites specifically meant for mobile platforms. The most fascinating ones listed below.

For instance, if you want a quick Facebook page, try Facebook Lite or mobile. Seach engines like Google mobile and Clusty are examples of effective search engines on the go.
  1. Answers.com http://mobile.answers.com/ All-in-one encyclopedia, manuals and dictionaries
  2. Ask.com http://m.ask.com/
  3. Bing http://m.bing.com/
  4. Clusty.com http://m.clusty.com/ Great for viewing results in stripped down format
  5. CNET http://m.cnet.com/
  6. CNN http://m.cnn.com/
  7. Facebook Mobile http://m.facebook.com/
  8. Facebook Lite http://lite.facebook.com/
  9. Flickr http://m.flickr.com/
  10. Google Books http://books.google.com/m Read free public domain books
  11. Google News www.google.com/m/news/i Access personalized news for Ghana, India, Ireland, Italia, Kenya, México, Namibia, Nederland, New Zealand, Nigeria..
  12. Google Images http://images.google.com/m/
  13. Google Reader http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/ RSS Reader
  14. Google Web http://www.google.com/m
  15. Gmail.com http://m.gmail.com/
  16. Making of America Books http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/
  17. Netvibes http://m.netvibes.com/tabs RSS Reader
  18. Technorati http://m.technorati.com/ Search the blogs
  19. USA Today http://m.usatoday.com/
  20. Yahoo Mobile (including Yahoo Mail) http://m.yahoo.com/ Right click on the list and open in a new window. Let me know how useful you have found it.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

10 FREE Google's Custom Search Engines for Librarians

This is one of the most useful combo for searching Google CSE. Click here to have a feel of it.

I discovered these 10 useful CSEs:

  1. ALA-RUSA Best Free Reference Web Sites : "This is a search engine of the web sites included in the 1999-2006 annual lists issued by the Mars Best of Free Reference Web Sites Committee of the Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of ALA to recognize outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web."
  2. Librarian's E-Library: "Selected resources on Libraries and Librarianship from the American Library Association (ALA) Library and a growing list of volunteers." Created by ALA Library since Nov 22, 2006
  3. Intergovernmental Organization Search Engine: "This is a search engine for students, faculty, researchers, and officials who are doing research in intergovernmental organization topics. The IGO Search searches across hundreds of IGO websites, enabling users to research topics such as active IGOs working on HIV/AIDS in Uganda."
  4. Theological Journals Search: "Search over 340 religion journals related to scripture studies, systematic theology, practical ministries,..."
  5. eBooks Search: "Find eBooks on the net."
  6. Business Research Search Engine: "A collection of the most credible, substantive, timely, and insightful business research related sites and blogs. ..."
  7. Google Video, Movie, Documentaries, Television, Radio and Sound Search: "This Custom Google Search Programme seeks in internationaal audio-visual heritage websites comprising film, video, ..."
  8. Sub-Saharan African Governments: "This is a search engine of web sites from Sub-Saharan African governments. It is limited to government sites at the national level, and does not include sites from state governments, political parties, or non-governmental organizations. For best results, search using the official language(s) of the country you are interested in."
  9. Data Mining Search Engine: "Search engine with a focus on data mining topics, news, forums, blogs and any website related to data mining."
  10. Tool help for learning designers: "Find help about tools to use in learning activities"

Samuel Eyitayo

Friday, March 20, 2009

Profitable Google Search Part 2

Have you ever been asked for topics you are not farmiliar with? That is common with all Reference Librarians. In such cases, one needs to do a little bit resarch on that subect but digging for answers to the request. Tools that are available to us as Reference Librarians are Dictionaries, Encyclopedia,... These are also available online. In fact using Google can be a lot faster depending on the subject area. Use 'define:' with the keyword. Google willgive glossary definitions of the word. Try it out

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Profitable Google Searches Part 1 - Digital Library

Getting what you want out of Google may be a problem. In the next few postings I will show you some of the searhes I came up with while answering some questions as a Reference Specialist. Please enjoy it.

The first is targetted at LIPs who urgently need to gather some resources on Digital Library (337,000). Click on this link and learn from the search terms I used.

Did you like what you saw? Please let me know.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Finding Tutorials That You Need Part 1

I am writing this piece from the venue of the Nigerian Library Association (NLA) Annual General Meeting (AGM) and National Conference holding in Kaduna.

One of the side-issues I noted in my notebook was the need for continuing education of professional librarians. In fact, a lady came up almost in tears asking colleagues to help in getting a space in the Nigerian Open University. She was actually responding to one of the presenters who challenged professionals not to be satisfied being "a local champion, but a global champion."

This, again fired my interest in finding out more places where Library and Information Professionals (LIPs) could go online and find FREE tutorials. Then, I ask myself, where is the natural place to start searching for such information. Your guess is as good as mine - Google! Then, I remembered I read an article sometime ago that suggested that one way to start is to get on some of the social bookmarks like del.icio.us

So, what I did was to go to http://del.icio.us and do a simple search for tutorials. Then... you have list of resources in front of you that many people have discovered and stored for future use. You may want to narrow your search down to a particular area e.g. Google, Podcasting ... From here, all you need to do is to click and go.

I have to get off now. I have a session to catch up with. Watch out for part two.

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