When I teach Zotero workshops, I'm often asked by people who can't attend whether the session will be archived in some way to watch later. The answer is now yes -- we recorded my last workshop and posted it on Youtube.

After seeing the initial video, I identified several places where it wasn't clear what I was doing on the screen. I recorded some very short (ten or fifteen second) screencasts to drop in, and our instructional designer edited them into a finished product.

I'd like to thank our library's instructional designer Cynthia Kennedy, who did all the editing and production work, and Mat Munson at GSU's Multimedia Communication Services department who filmed the session.

Yesterday we recorded Adventures in Library Instruction episode 35, sadly without Rachel this month but with special guest Meredith Farkas. We talked about her latest American Libraries column "The Guide on the Side," and about the role of learning objects and scalable online instruction generally. It was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks to Anna for producing and editing!

Last summer, Google introduced Google Scholar Citations. It's a simple tool designed to let scholarly authors track works that cite their publications. I don't remember seeing a lot of talk about it, but it's so useful I thought it was worth a blog post.

To set it up, go to Google Scholar and click the My Citations link below the search box. It's not perfect, since it only tracks citations that appear in Scholar, but it's easy and free. I've discovered a few citations this way that I'd have missed otherwise.

(Video by Dowling Library)

This month on Adventures in Library Instruction we talked about discovery layers: what they are, how we think students use them, and how we use them in the classroom.

Download the mp3

Subscribe to the podcast

How did I miss this? There's now a third-party iPad app for Zotero called ZotPad. I've only had it for a couple of hours, but here are my initial impressions.

For six dollars, you get an app that allows you to connect to your Zotero account, browse your personal and group libraries, view (but not edit) item details, and view or save attachments. Extremely handy! Frankly, I think it's worth the price just to have access to all my PDF attachments.

It doesn't allow you to write to your libraries in any way, so no creating collections or items, adding notes, or joining groups. It also doesn't have a way to create citations or bibliographies if you're writing on your iPad -- it's strictly a viewer. The developer is looking into adding improved search, support for viewing notes, and editing library items.

ZotPad requires iOS 5. I had to update my iPad in order to install it, which I'd been putting off for a while. I think it was worth the hassle.

ZotPad (iTunes app store)

ZotPad (developer's website)

So yeah, hi, I totally missed the Library Day in the Life thing, as usual. I still felt like pausing for a moment just to look at what I'm up to.

This week I am...

• Reading for a New Media faculty reading group starting next week in the Communication department.
• Revising materials for my Zotero workshop next week (first one since the release of Zotero Standalone). We're video recording it this time.
• Writing and editing Libguides for classes taught and not-yet-taught.
• Taking online ethics training.
• Working on an instruction plan for the Comm department.
• Planning next week's episode of Adventures in Library Instruction.
• Doing some collection development, (which I'm behind on as usual for this point in the semester).
• Answering students' research questions by email.
• Other stuff? Probably other stuff.

#busy

I'm teaching two classes for Simmons College's Continuing Education program in the next few months.

February 2012: Zotero: Using and Supporting the Research Power Tool: This is my four-week class on Zotero. We'll cover the basics of installing and using Zotero, all the way up through best practices for supporting and teaching Zotero in your library. (And you get the e-edition of my book along with the course.)

May 1-June 11 2012: Instruction Librarian Boot Camp: We just expanded this course to six weeks based on students' requests to make it longer! This is a great class for new LIS grads looking for your first instruction librarian jobs, or seasoned instructors looking to improve your skills. We cover learning outcomes, technology tools, active learning, and assessment. I'm co-teaching this class with my GSU colleague Sarah Steiner.

New episode of Adventures in Library Instruction! Get it here.

We observed Open Access Week at Georgia State for (I think) the first time this year. Our Digital Repository Services Librarian Amy Elliott organized a series of workshops for faculty this week, and we kind of blogged the hell out of it on the library's website.

I contributed a short post this morning about why OA should matter to undergraduates, and plugging the Colonial Academic Alliance Undergraduate Research Journal, a multi-institutional OA journal hosted by the GSU Library.

I'm really pleased that GSU is actively advocating for OA now. It's something I've personally believed in for several years and it's cool to see my institution stepping up. (The recent copyright lawsuit has brought access issues like OA to the attention of more people on campus, which is a positive side effect of a bad situation.)

I'll end by co-signing a statement that my friend Amy Buckland made a month ago on her blog -- I decided this a while back, but it's a good public statement to make during OA Week:

"from now on, i will only review articles for, sit on editorial boards of, and publish in, open access journals."

Right on, Amy -- me too.

My former GSU colleague Casey Long and I recently gave a presentation called "LibGuides: Working Inside the Box" at the Georgia COMO library conference.

We talked about best practices for design, content, and structuring LibGuides or other online research guides. We got a good reception and had lots of excellent questions and discussion as part of the session.

Casey had the great idea to make a LibGuide to accompany the presentation itself, with links, resources and references, and a copy of our slides. I'm pleased to say that Springshare is going to add it to their Best of LibGuides site.