I’ve put up a guided tour of Story Starters at: http://storystarters.iis.syr.edu/about/sstart/sstart.html Take a look.
Blogging Software
I use WordPress. Some might wonder why the StoryStarters decided to start with WordPress integration before other blogging packages. The same reasons apply to why I use it for my personal blog:
Active development community that keeps it secure
Excellent anti-spam features
Excellent blogging features including calendars, search and support of RSS
Open source PHP with an easy to use plugin architecture
I should come clean and admit I donâ??t use WordPressâ?? â??writeâ?? tab that much. I prefer ecto as an authoring package. It integrates with a lot of blogs using XML RPC, and is very mac friendly.
In case you wondering why I am writing this, this is my first official StoryStarters post! Check it out:
http://storystarters.iis.syr.edu
StoryStarters is Open for Business
Consider this a bonus sneak peak for those who read my blog. On Monday I’ll be announcing StoryStarters at the VRD Conference. However, it is ready to use right now! Create an account and get started. Download the plugin if you use WordPress and go to town:
http://storystarters.iis.syr.edu/
For those of you who don’t remember, StoryStarters is a blog utility site. You can create lists of questions and items for folks to blog about. You can map these questions to Google Maps. If you don’t use WordPress feel free to cut and paste or use bookmarklets. All you need is to use a Trackback URL.
Slashdot | Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design
Read this article: Slashdot | Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design. Brilliant! Basically, it’s about using academic standards and copyright to fight intelligent design (a very good idea).
For those of you not familiar with the current state of affairs in K-12 education, states (driven in no small part by the Federal ‘No Child Left Behind’ law) are aligning just about everything that happens in a classroom to curriculum standards. Standards are more or less agreed upon curricula. While many of the standards are developed by the states themselves, most are at least derived from national standards. National standards are, for all intents and purposes, copyrighted books.
By not allowing Kansas to align intelligent design stuff to their copyrighted standards, they force Kansas to either abandon intelligent design, or a set of rigorous nationally recognized standards. Brilliant!
Making Digital Reference History…well, at Least Reconstructing It
First the facts, then the plea, then the larger picture.
Facts:
I’ve put up a website to allow the VRD community to add events, articles, people and other to an interactive timeline (surrounding the VRD conferences…more on that later). It is anonymous and pretty informal. People go to the timeline at http://askeric.syr.edu/VRDTimeline and they can add (or edit) items they feel should be part of the history of virtual reference (at least over the past 7-10 years). You can browse the timeline, and I even put up an RSS feed and a cloud view of the entries.
Plea:
I need folks to add things they feel should be part of this timeline. I also need folks to vote for items they feel are particularly significant. While the timeline is centered on the VRD conferences, I’m really hoping to build a more comprehensive view. If you wrote an article in virtual reference…add it! Started a service – add it! I’m very interested in the people you feel shaped the past 7-10 years in virtual reference (people seem reluctant to add those). I’d really like this to be a resource of and for the community.
Larger Picture:
I’ve mentioned a couple of times that this has a VRD perspective (particularly the conferences). This is because I’m hoping to use this data as part of the next VRD book from Neal-Schuman. The next book will be more of a continuous narrative, and less proceedings (it will include articles from this year’s conference). The idea is to capture the evolution of digital/virtual reference over the past decade. In the text will be people profiles, important articles, and a good dose of “movement building” activities and descriptions. I’d hope to really reflect the community, and hence the desire to have the VRD community add information and vote.
So please add and vote.
Open Infrastructure for the Greater Good
In the spirit of sharing ideas early (even before they are fully developed), I’m posting a prospectus I put together on building an Open Infrastructure for the Greater Good. Maybe it already exists and I just don’t know about it, that’s why I put them into the public realm for comment. I think it is a good idea, but I’d be interested to see what others think:
Developing an Open Infrastructure for the Greater Good
A Brief Prospectus
R. David Lankes, Syracuse University
[email protected]
Vincent and Didi Frochette lost their son Lukie to a rare form of cancer. In memory of their son they formed a charitable foundation to raise money for the Syracuse Childrenâ??s Hospital. Each year they hold a golfing event and want to put up a website to both advertise the event and recognize sponsors. Both Vincent and Didi had full time jobs, and no technology experience. Imagine if they could go to a place on the web and with three clicks of a mouse and 5 minutes time build a web site. Not a simple 1 page brochure on the web, but a website that allows Vincent to blog about the upcoming event; allowed the couple to upload pictures of the current and past events, allowed them to set up e-mail accounts and listservs for volunteers, and ensured their site conformed to standards for disabilities, usability.
Funding agencies are taking scarce funds from program activities and devoting it to building project websites. While there may be projects where the construction of highly unique web resources is key to the success of a program activity, in many cases funds for web sites lease web server space, hire designers, and train staff in how to build web pages. If the primary purpose of funding organizations is to promote Internet literacy, this makes sense. Otherwise these dollars represent money that could be spent on program objectives.
VRD is Coming
Lankes is gearing up for the 7th Virtual Reference Desk Conference – this year in San Francisco! Every year has provided the best information on virtual reference, and set the agenda for the whole reference community for the year. There will be a lot of news and events at this conference. You shouldn’t miss it.
Check out the conference website http://www.vrd2005.org
New Book on the Way
I opened up my mail on Saturday, and what did I see? The new Neal-Schuman Catalog! While a new catalog of books is always a reason for celebration, this one had my new book on the cover.
The Virtual Refernce Desk: Creating a Reference Future is the latest of books coming out of the Virtual Refernce Desk Conferences. This one was co-edited by myself, Eileen Abels, Marilyn White and Saira Haque.
I checked and as of this morning it wasn’t on the web site, but coming soon.
The Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse (DREW) Project: Creating the Infrastructure for Digital Reference Research through a Multi-Disciplinary Knowledge Base
The Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse (DREW) Project: Creating the Infrastructure for Digital Reference Research through a Multi-Disciplinary Knowledge Base, Nicholson, S. and Lankes, R. D. (2005). In Lankes, Abels, White, and Haque (Eds)., Creating a Reference Future. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.
Creating a Reference Future
Creating a Reference Future. Lankes, R. David, Abels, E., White, L., and Haque, S.. (Eds.). (2005). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.