Thursday, December 3, 2009

Widgey, Widgey, Widgets!

I’m back!  Sorry about the week lapse in my blog, but I decided to take a week off due to the time gobblers (that’s a Thanksgiving reference), of committees, sub-committees and training meetings, and workshops and meetings and meetings.  At one such workshop I attended today, at the University of Maryland, College Park, I learned all about WorldCat Local and Yahoo Pipes (click here to link to Yahoo Pipes).  I won’t go into too much detail, as I suspect the Emerging Technology Librarian’s blog from Towson will probably do a much better job (click here to connect to their blog), but I did want to point out some new features I employed here, as a result of what I learned today.


Yahoo Pipes allows the easy creation of widgets from RSS feeds created elsewhere on the web.  I created a few lists from the University of Maryland system’s catalog in order to create a couple of widgets here that you can browse to see new titles on diversity and on what I’m reading.  They are directly to the left of this post.  One of the titles I’ve chosen is called Catching Stories and was written in part by a colleague at Kent about Oral Histories.  There are not a great number of titles on the subject and it’s a great reference for those that would like not only an introduction, but also a way to improve the practice of Oral Histories. I’m currently reading the title and will use it for my eventual work in Special Collections (hopefully!).  




Check out the other titles I’ve added and look for the addition of more of these widgets.  Let me know if there’s a subject you would like to see on this page. (Please forgive the fact that I'm really into graphic novels at the moment, which my husband patronizingly refers to as "comic books", but some are really, really, good!)  Enjoy!


Next week I’ll be blogging about my library story, as mandated by the library blog gods.

2 comments:

  1. I will have to check out both Yahoo Pipes and the book Catching Stories. I worked with the Oral History Program during my residency at Purdue. Thanks for the post.

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  2. If you're still in Ohio next summer you should find out when the Oral History Institute is happening again at Kenyon. It's put on by the Ohio Humanities Council -but I'm not sure of the dates for next year, yet. Here's a link: http://www.ohiohumanities.org/?s=Oral+History+Institute

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