Flex Your Info

SJSU-AILA Grant

Heather — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:28:25 +0000

The American Indian Library Association is partnering with San Jose School of Library and Information Science to apply for an IMLS grant to provide scholarships for American Indians and Alaska Native students to earn an MLIS. The school is conducting a survey to help with a needs assessment for the grant proposal.

Amazon Examples

Heather — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:13:11 +0000

When Amazon changed its Product Advertising API to require signing of requests, it rendered my Rated New Fiction and Similar Products pipes unusable. The benefit of doing the work in pipes is that you don't have to have a server from which to run the script. However, as I mentioned in my post about Signing Amazon Requests, it seems like signing Amazon requests using Pipes would require an external service that applies SHA1 to a block of text. A commenter suggested trying YQL rather than Yahoo! Pipes, but I decided instead to just redo the work in PHP since a server would have to be involved anyway.

Language Preservation

Heather — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:17:36 +0000

Indigenous languages have long been endangered by a combination of urbanization and modernization, as well as past governmental policies of removal, relocation, and termination of indigenous populations. However, recent years have seen a renewed interest in reclaiming and preserving indigenous knowledge, including native languages. The use of technology can help with language preservation and revitalization, but such programs must also be sensitive to issues of ownership of and access to cultural knowledge.

Signing Amazon Requests

Heather — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:01:09 +0000

For the past few months, I've received emails from Amazon reminding me that the Product Advertising API (formerly Amazon Associates Web Service) will require signed requests after August 15 of this year. From my understanding, this seems to encompass all calls, including calls to ItemLookup, which is primarily the way I've interacted with Amazon's services. I finally had some time today to sit down and figure out what this means for me--and it seems to be a bit of a mess!

HHLIB Registration Giveaway

Heather — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:54:48 +0000

The first ever Handheld Librarian Online Conference is tomorrow! As thanks for setting up the event tracker, the wonderful organizers of the conference provided me with a registration code. Unfortunately, I'm unable to attend the conference due to time zone differences and meetings, so I thought I'd pass the registration on to one of you in the form of a random giveaway.

Handheld Librarian Online

Heather — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:58:44 +0000

Tomorrow is the Handheld Librarian Online Conference, which looks like it will be very interesting! If you're attending and want to see what other attendees are commenting on, or if you're unable to make it, use the hhlib tracker to keep up with what's going on. It allows you to view tweets tagged with "#hhlib", as well as photos and delicious links tagged with "hhlib". Enjoy the conference!

ALA2009 Statistics

Heather — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:28:39 +0000

One of the things that I wanted to include in the event tracker was statistics to see how many tweets happened on each day and for each hash tag. I finally had a chance to add UI for that to the application, and I've made a few other usability changes as well. Take a look and let me know what you think!

Shawnee Lands

Heather — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:19:29 +0000

One of my interests in technology is to use it to make information more interesting and to show off information in new ways. I tried to do that with information about historical Shawnee Lands as part of the coursework for my Maps, GIS and Map Librarianship class last fall. This week, many members of my tribe are on a tour of historical Shawnee lands in Ohio (and I wish I was with them!). In honor of their trip, I thought I'd share my project.

ALA – Social Software Showcase

Heather — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:21:49 +0000

The Social Software Showcase, presented by LITA's BIGWIG, is a chance to learn about several different areas of software in a quick, efficient way. The four sessions I attended were mobile websites and applications, information mashups with government information, cloud computing, and Google Wave.

ALA – Urban Indian Culture Keepers

Heather — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:28:12 +0000

The Urban Indian Culture Keepers program at ALA, sponsored by the American Indian Library Association, includes librarians and Indian community members who keep the Indian ways alive in urban Indian country. Learn how librarians and communities collaborate to create innovative programming that creates library services that are relevant and vibrant. Listen as people share intergenerational connections that bring Indian culture to life. Hear from modern day culture keepers.