For those of us who want a really fast snapshot of recent Internet activity and news on a topic, try Addictomatic.  You can simply type in a search term, and get a page highlighting the latest news from Twitter, Google Blog search, YouTube and more.  It’s kind of fun, so try it out — here’s my search on the Watson computer that won Jeopardy.

For those of us interested in what’s happening at Code4Lib this year, they’ll be live streaming the conference events.  The separate stream links are here.

On Wednesday, February 9 at 10 am, join us as we kick off the 2011 season of Spark! featuring our Dean of Libraries, Danuta Nitecki as she talks about space assessment.  This talk is based on her talk, Space Assessment as a Venue for Defining the Academic Library, presented at the Library Assessment conference in October, 2010.

A question came up recently about whether it’s possible to search Summon using a DOI.  I did a little research and discovered that it is, in fact, possible!  Simply type DOI: and the number into the search box, like this, and go directly to your article entry in Summon:

DOI:10.1177/1746847708088735

You can also use the Article Finder via GetIt to search by DOI.

From CurrentCites, Jakob Neilsen did a study of 43 students to review how they interact with websites, including university sites.

The results busted three myths of student Internet use:

(1) Students are technology wizards

(2) Students crave multi-media and fancy design

(3) Students are enraptured by social networking

The students often preferred simple design, and repeated comments that have been heard again and again in website usability studies (e.g. website text should be easy to scan). Other findings included that students were skeptical of sites that lacked depth, and they often have multiple tabs open at once and switch contexts frequently.

The summary is here, and the full 259-page report is for sale, here.

As Libraries think about data curation, why don’t we start with our own data?  This Code4Lib article from NCSU talks about how to plan and execute a data analysis project for helping to make decisions and share with stakeholders for various programs.

Some examples include:
Reference Transactions
QuickSearch (NCSU’s homegrown federated search)
Library Course Tools
Special collections usage

“Although there is undeniably a time-commitment involved in initiating this kind of effort, especially in cases where data-analysis and interdepartmental outreach are not part of one’s usual responsibilities, we think the short term and long term benefits are significant. At NCSU Libraries, a grassroots approach to data analysis with cooperation between technically-oriented librarians and departmental stakeholders has yielded positive short term results, helping a variety of departments to answer questions about how patrons use specific library applications and services. Developing strong collaborative partnerships between departments is both a challenge and a positive outcome of this approach. Longer term, we hope these efforts can increase awareness of good data collection practices and of the opportunities that exist to leverage data to answer questions that can help libraries improve applications and services, as well as foster a spirit of collaboration between library departments.”

http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/4258

Image from thewildernessdowntown.com

Most of the time the difference between one web standard and another isn’t obvious in day-to-day use, but HTML5 is different.  It’s currently supported on many browsers, and will enable several features that will make (y)our Internet experience much, much better.   Via CurrentCites, here’s the beginning of an article in Technology Review that goes over the details and explains what’s what.  Drexel Libraries has access Technology Review if you want to read the whole thing, which I’d recommend.

One example of HTML5 in action is the experimental interactive video The Wilderness Downtown by Arcade Fire.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should check it out.  It combines the video with information you provide, making it a custom video.

Some features pointed out in the Technology Review article:

You’ll be able to drag and drop images from web pages to email, and so on.  GMail allows this now, but this will be ubiquitous with HTML5.

Video and audio will be easily embedded into web pages, eliminating the need for Flash.

There will be increased browser storage. This means that interactions with web sites will be much faster because your browser will have less constant back-and-forth with the server.  This also means that more information will be stored in your browser, so even if you’re not connected to the internet, you’ll be able to send emails, or change your fantasy football roster and your browser will sync it up when you reconnect.

IM+ now has a web application that works a lot like our beloved Pidgin, but also has the capability to integrate with Skype chat accounts.  It works on the desktop now as well as in their popular mobile interface, and it just came out of beta.

Try it out!

This data visualization diagram posted at Form & Function, via ReadWriteWeb.

The EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) just released their 2010 Study on Undergraduates and IT.

Some highlights:

• Over 40% of undergraduates are “power users” of internet-capable handheld devices, compared with only 25% in 2009.
• 95% of respondents ages 18-24 use social networking sites, as do 58% of those 50 and older.  96% of these use Facebook.
• Most students are accessing course information via a Course Management System (CMS), such as Blackboard, but the number of participants who “feel positive” about their CMS has dropped to 51% from 77% in 2007.

The full report, and key findings, are available for download.