Monthly Archives: June 2008

Weebly

Posted on June 30, 2008 | 1 Comment

I found a website that makes me websites. It’s called Weebly (www.weebly.com), and it is the easiest way I have found to make nice, pretty websites that do stuff. Weebly is a great service for those among us who want to make dynamic websites but don’t have a clue about coding. The website is created by dragging and clicking the various elements on to multiple pages. It supposed basic stuff like images, text, links, and flickr photo albums, YouTube videos and Google maps. It’s super cool! I made a fake website for the Master of Information Studies Student Council: http://missc.weebly.com/

You can also pick from a couple dozen different designs and layouts, and can add as many pages as you want. Time magazine names it one of the 50 best websites of 2007 because of its ease of use and polished look: See it here. And if Time magazine says it’s good, who am I to argue? ING is on the list too, and I love that website like a child. A child holding my entire savings.

Anyway, check out weebly if you want a user-friendly website that makes cute websites!

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Technologies

Tagged ,

Faculty of Information Quarterly

Posted on June 22, 2008 | 1 Comment

The working life is a sweet one, but in a bid to fill those endless hours between 5 pm and 10 pm, I’ve decided to launch a journal with some friends from the Faculty of Information (formerly the Faculty of Information Studies – the “Studies” is being dropped later this summer). I felt there was a significant need within our faculty to create some sort of dialogue – an interplay between students, faculty and staff to create a real sense of intellectual community, and as a means to simply communicating with one another in a formalized, reflective venue. This need for communication is particularly pressing in an i-school; the information movement is a young one and we haven’t yet developed a common language with which to speak to one another (if you have to brush up on your i-school literature there is an official website: http://www.ischools.org/oc/index.html). Moveover, the relationships between library and information science, archives and records management, information systems, and museum studies are rocky ones – there are certainly similarities, but also some key differences that can be difficult for us to over; they create gaps in our common understanding and can prevent an appreciation for divergent views.

Continue reading →

→ 1 Comment

Posted in School

Tagged , , , ,

Reaction to Bill-C 61

Posted on June 15, 2008 | 1 Comment

Jim Prentice has presented a new copyright bill in the House this past week that has Canada’s information world up in arms! The reaction was pretty incredible – Metro Morning’s tech specialist was freaking out on the radio, Michael Geist has been clogging up my google reader and the CLA listserv’s e-mails are scathing, to say the least. It’s been said before, but I’ll say it here… When did COPYRIGHT become such an exciting topic?! It’s great that so many people are making the connections between their own behaviours and activities, and federal legislation that is wordy and boring and not a great read on a Sunday afternoon. Continue reading →

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Library Issues

Tagged , , ,

My summer at the LOP

Posted on June 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

I just probably elaborate on this Library of Parliament gig I have this summer.

First, I want to start by saying that I got this incredible position as a direct result of volunteering with student council. NOT from getting good marks in library school. NOT from previous library experience (well, maybe a bit, but not really). NOT from improving my 100 meter free by several seconds this year.

Just from volunteering. The reason I emphasize this is because volunteering is free, it is a great way to network, and even if it cuts into your schoolwork time a bit, it doesn’t really matter. Nobody is asking for your marks at the end of library school. If you are a first-year library student reading this, please take note (And run for the Professional Development Co-Chair position this year!). Continue reading →

→ Leave a comment

Posted in At Work

Tagged , ,

KM and the Tipping Point

Posted on June 1, 2008 | 2 Comments

I’m in the middle of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s, “The Tipping Point.” It’s a very interesting read, in which Gladwell attempts to put his finger on how certain social behaviours or events go from being a blip on society’s radar, to being a full-blown social phenomenon. Gladwell argues that these success stories got to a tipping point, and then exploded into popular culture.

The particular section I’m reading is an anecdote about a company called Gore – as in GoreTex, though they also make tons of stuff for the electronics industry, health care and the military (and here I thought they only made rain jackets). Gore never has more than 150 people at a single plant; if a plant grows beyond that, they buy a new plant and split the group in half. The founder, Bill Gore, noticed that things get clumsy at a hundred and fifty, and that in small plants every part of the process for designing and making and marketing a given product is subject to the same group scrutiny to ensure a constant climate of innovation and sharing, and a holistic understanding of production. There is a common relationship among workers so that they are constantly moving forward and a sort of “peer-pressure” develops which ensures everyone is working toward a unified goal.

Continue reading →

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Library Issues

Tagged ,