Useful video resource for policy issues: UChannel

Description: A collection of 1000+ public affairs lectures, panels and events from academic institutions all over the world

It's especially useful because it only includes materials from academic institutions, each tagged and browsable via tag cloud.

UChannel

PMOG as Info Lit Tool?

PMOG (The Passively Multiplayer Online Game) as a tool for information literacy? It seems to have some good potential to merge gaming and info lit from what I can tell so far, but would be very interested in hearing others thoughts on this.

I've created a very basic proof-of-concept PMOG "mission" based around finding e-books on our site here (you need to have registered for PMOG and installed the Firefox plug-in to take part): http://pmog.com/missions/find_books_in_empire_state_college_library

We could potentially integrate such missions into the Info Lit study, Angel courses, and elsewhere.

There is a good article on this tool and it's potential in libraries here:
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6555546.htm.html

Dana

How Wikipedia stacked up against subscription databases

Article, with methodology and results, here:
http://www.teachinglibrarian.org/weblog/2008/05/how-wikipedia-stacked-up-against.html

Conclusion: Wikipedia and Gale Virtual Reference Library both do pretty well, Oxford Ref was in the middle and Encyclopedia Britannica fared the worst.

Useful Links

GOOGLE:
Firefox Extension:
http://www.customizegoogle.com/
(Let's you use Google Suggest (suggest words while you're typing), rewrite links to point straight to the images in Google Images and more)

Google Suggest:
http://www.google.com/webhp?q=&esrch=GoogleSuggestBeta
(suggest words while you're typing)

Google News Archive:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch
(shows timeline for relevant time periods)

TouchGraph Google Browser:
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html
(yet another visual search tool)
==============================
Not the norm:
http://altsearchengines.com/

Exalead:
http://www.exalead.com/search
(Customizable search engine home page with images of shortcuts (favs, bookmarks))

Factbites:
http://www.factbites.com/
(not just search results, bullets of facts regarding search)

Keyword Mutation Detection:
http://adlab.msn.com/keymut/
(see how many ways you can find Britney Spears spelled (please don't!))

Loki:
http://loki.com/
(great for finding ATM's, coffee shops, etc. in a place you've never been)

NationMaster:
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
(compare countries on nearly any statistic you can think of)

Ian

Ideas for Librarian Course Dev Consultations Checklist

Please add other ideas to this list (there are a couple from our meeting that I couldn't remember) for a checklist for the course dev consultations:

• Link to a section of the Writer's Complex or other tutorial that discusses the assignment type and samples of that type of assignment (examples: Types of Papers and Sample Papers via File Cabinet)
  
• For starting research paper assignments, link to Developing a Research Question page.
• For business courses, look at Conference Board Business Knowledge Powerpoints and Webcasts as possible multimedia resources.
• For policy/social issue course/topics: look at CQ Researcher and Opposing Viewpoints
• Construct an RSS feed to embed in course (e.g., can use Feedo to combine multiple feeds into one)
  
• Link to existing Subject Guide or suggest creating a new one (via LibGuides?) to embed into course
• IH: Embed search widget into appropriate place in course. For example, a discussion topic is brought up about a new term yet to be defined in course. Search widget could be placed in discussion and contain search box with:
  dictionary AND
  or
  encyclopedia AND
  already filled in for student. It could link to credo, for example.