Techfoot

IT Conversations: Edward Adams

This is an interesting discussion of the process of redesigning the American Bar Association Journal. Previous versions of the site featured one story a day with no persistent links. The new versions features a number of updated features to move from a fairly traditional professional magazine to site that is clearly user-focused

• Dozens of new stories written by professional journalists each day.
• Analysis from more than 1,000 legal blogs, written by lawyers who are experts in their fields.
• Full text search of the 1000 blogs in the directory.
• Mobile Edition for the smart phone.

This isn’t a podcast I normally tune into, but I decided to give it a listen anyway because of the web development project we’re working on as part of the class. Turned out to be a good summary of the the thought process involved with rethinking a major professional site, with lots of lessons for us to consider in our research site. Definitely worth firing up when doing some serious time on the Arc Trainer or the commute to/from Richmond.

The Independent Scholar’s Handbook by Ronald Gross

The Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars has posted the full text of Ronald Gross’ book The Independent Scholar’s Guide, one of the my favorite adult education works of all time. The book, which was first published in 1982 and then re-released in 1993, contains the stories of individuals from every background whose lives contained a serious commitment to research, investigation, theory building and other intellectual enterprises. In addition, the book provides a resource guide with specific suggestions on how to move from “Messy Beginnings” to the finished product of research–whatever your field of endeavor.

One of my favorite stories in the book comes when the author, beginning his career as the “lowest of the low” in the world of New York publishing, comes face to face with editorial giant Max Schuster…

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Swem Review of Technology
How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way

Mack Lundy has posted a nice example of how using RSS technology can lead to finding some excellent resources that you might otherwise miss. Using an RSS aggregator, like BlogLines, is one of the key skills for making the most of the collective wisdom of the blogosphere. His post refers to an article that introduces a complete novice to the idea of RSS in the “Oprah way” posted on the Back in Skinny Jeans bog.

When you go to Back in Skinny Jeans you might ask yourself, “What earthly reason does Mack have for going to a web site about beauty and weight loss?” My arrival there is an example of how information is distributed across the Internet and how unlikely connections are made. The sequence went like this:

1. Stephanie posts the article to her blog
2. Steve Rubel on the Micro Persuasion blog posts about it later that day.
3. Jill Stover picks up the story from Micro Persuasion and blogs about it today on her blog, Library Marketing-Thinking Outside the Book. Jill is the Undergraduate Services Librarian at VCU, by the way.
4. I’m a subscriber to Library Marketing, I read Stephanie’s “how to …”, and wrote this blog entry.

While I don’t read as many blogs as Mack–113 to his 154–I agree that it’s a good investment of some time each week to “read a lot, read broadly, and follow links - there is a lot of good stuff out there.”