Of Toolbars, E-books, Tiny URLs, Copyright, Mergers, and Autumnal Fashion

Autumn is that wonderful time of year when the leaves change colour, the days get cooler and we don our warmest, fluffiest cardigan or slightly tattered tweed jacket with the leather elbows still intact� well I do anyway �what better time than this to cuddle up with a new toolbar from EBSCOhost, snuggle in with the latest the Library has to offer in electronic books, all the while using a nifty tool for creating tiny URLs, reading up on the latest Canadian copyright legislation and musing over the latest Blackboard/WebCT merger�and hey, you can do all that right here!

1) New! EBSCOhost Toolbar
For all you fans of the Library�s EBSCOhost databases, there is now the EBSCOhost Toolbar! (Yay!) Just download the toolbar and any time you need to do a search of premium, authoritative and up-to-date magazines and journals, simply enter your search into the search box in the bar on your browser. The default database to search is MasterFILE Elite, which contains the full text for nearly 1200 general interest titles�if you�d like to select a different database or more than one, just click on the Choose Databases tab once EBSCOhost has launched. Please remember that when accessing from home you�ll need to log in with your faculty/staff or student number and PIN. Get in touch if you�re not sure what these are! More info and download instructions (Currently available in beta for Internet Explorer 6.0/XP and Firefox only.)
New to the Library�s wonderful world of EBSCOhost databases and wondering what the bejeezers I�m nattering on about? EBSCOhost databases are online collections of magazines and journals in many disciplines. The databases are updated weekly so you are assured of getting the most up-to-date content. Some magazines appear in EBSCOhost before they hit the newsstands! Examples of some of the titles available are: Maclean�s, National Geographic, Time, Nature (12 month delay), Journal of Engineering Design (12 month delay), Journal of Ethics, Citizenship Studies, and more! The Library subscribes to 17 of these amazing little bundles of knowledge! Need help getting started? A tutorial awaits!

2) New electronic books
As you may or may not know, brand new electronic books are added to the Library�s collections practically every minute (well, maybe not so often as that�but at least every month.) Some of these books are so new, they haven�t even rolled off the presses yet! No kidding! Check out this month�s batch:
Absolute Beginner�s Guide to Podcasting (pub date: October 2005!)Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Unleashed (pub date: October, 2005!)
Manage your Money and Investments with Microsoft Excel (pub date: September, 2005)
Absolute Beginner�s Guide to iPod and iTunes, 2nd Edition (pub date: September, 2005)
Create Your Own Digital Photography (pub date: September, 2005)
Digital Photography Pocket Guide, 3rd Edition (pub date: September, 2005)
Using Moodle (pub date: September, 2005)
Anywhere Computing with Laptops: Making Mobile Easier (pub date: September, 2005)
To access these titles and more, go to the Library�s electronic books collection and select Safari Tech Books Online.

3) Tiny Tip
Don�t you just love it when you want to email an URL to a colleague only to find that the URL goes on and on ad nauseam forever and ever�a thousand forward slashes, numbers and characters you never even knew existed, stretching off to infinity? You just know that URL won�t appear as a link in your email message and so your colleague is going to curse and groan at you as he cuts and pastes the massive string into his browser, all the while thinking, �this better be worth it�. Well, TinyURL can help! TinyURL takes super long and awkward-looking URLs and shrinks them down so that you can send them off with the greatest of ease! Say good-bye to copying and pasting massive URLs! According to the TinyURL site, the URL never expires! Nifty in so many ways!

4) More on copyright!
Copyright is an ever-burning issue and a new e-book attempts to shed more light on Canadian copyright law in particular. Available through a Creative Commons license, the e-book In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law contains a series of essays from Canada�s leading copyright experts. From the site: �Completed immediately after the introduction of Bill C-60, this timely volume provides policy makers, lawyers, judges, educators, and interested Canadians with the tools and knowledge they need to participate in a copyright debate that will shape the future of the Internet, culture, and education in Canada.�

5) News for WebCT fans
Last week, a merger took place in the online education world that affects some of us here in MohawkLand, especially those who use WebCT! Learning management systems Blackboard and WebCT merged on October 12, 2005. The new company will be called Blackboard. Some may wonder, what will happen to WebCT? From the press release: �Over time, Blackboard will incorporate the best features and usability characteristics from the two product lines into a new, standards-based product set that will incorporate a scalable, architecture, the use of Web services, unparalleled ease of use, and flexible customization features.�

6) IM us!
Just a reminder: you can IM us anytime from M � F, 8:30am � 9pm and Sat and Sun, 8:30am � 5pm! We�re waaaaiting�standing by, eagerly, fervently hoping you�ll ask us a good, meaty question!

Latest scoop, In the Loop

This week: 1) the big news in the e-world is the OCA (Open Content Alliance), 2) Creative Commons (if you�re not sure what this is, don�t waste another minute and scroll down!), 3) Important reminder to all new staff and faculty regarding remote access to the Library�s premium content, 4) Library Catalogue Makeover, 5) BRAINwave of the month: grab & go with BRAINlinks, 6) PocketMod.

1. OCA Open Content Alliance Launched
A big announcement in the e-world this week!! In yet another effort to make heaps more online content available to the world, a new project and consortium called the Open Content Alliance was announced on Monday (Oct. 3rd). The Internet Archive, Yahoo!, Adobe Systems, The European Archive, Hewlett Packard Labs, The National Archives (UK), O’Reilly Media Inc, and the University of California formed the OCA (Open Content Alliance). The goal of the project is to provide access to loads of quality content, including �hundreds of thousands of books� and to make this content accessible through either Yahoo! or the OCA web site. The New York Times reports that many of the books will already be in the public domain (that is, not copyrighted) and that other content will be cleared through a Creative Commons license. (Don�t forget that thousands of books in the public domain area already available online through such projects as Project Gutenburg as well as other sites covered in this BRAIN_blog post (section3) and this BRAIN_blog post from last summer!) Some are saying that the OCA is Yahoo!�s bid to outdo Google and the Google Print project. Either way, the OCA is another exciting development in the e-world that will bring even more quality content to the fingertips of the masses! My fingertips are tingling already!

2. What is Creative Commons anyway?
I threw out the term Creative Commons back there with nary a word of explanation so here are a few such words. Creative Commons is very exciting to us in Libraryland as a question we get asked a lot is, �can I copy this (book, video, magazine article, add preferred item here) for my whole class?� The answer is sometimes a complicated mass of copyright legalese. In some cases, Creative Commons can help as CC licenses are easy to understand and they sometimes offer free access for non-commercial use.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2001 to offer different copyright options to owners of creative works. Through a Creative Commons license you can determine the type of license you wish to apply to your work (all rights reserved, some rights reserved, etc.) From the site: �Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may exercise your copyright rights�such as the right of others to copy your work, make derivative works or adaptations of your work, to distribute your work and/or make money from your work�.Creative Commons intends to help people express this preference for sharing by offering the world a set of licenses on our Website, at no charge.� And even more exciting, The Creative Commons web site offers a database of CC-licensed materials for download (some content freely available for educational use!) and links to other sites that offer this kind of content. Check out Creative Commons Canada for the Canadian version and the FAQ for the full deal.
As a sidenote, if you are wondering how you can provide access to a magazine or journal article for your entire class, drop us a line. The article may be available in one of our online magazine databases and so there may be a way we can set up access to the article online for your class!

3. Important Reminder!
Just a reminder to all new staff and faculty to come in and visit us in the Library so that we can give you your staff/faculty number in order to access the vast array of Library databases from home. For remote access to any of our online magazine or journal databases (these contain thousands of magazines and journals such as Maclean�s, The Economist, National Geographic, Harvard Business Review and more) or our ebook databases (these contain hundreds of recently published electronic books on IT, business, and a full spectrum of other subjects) you need to log in with your staff/faculty number and PIN. So drop on by, say �hi� and we�ll make sure you�re ready to roll in no time! Other ways to get in touch & more info about remote access.

4. Library Catalogue Extreme Makeover!
Have you checked out the new look of the Library catalogue? It�s more than just a pretty face! A few enhancements to watch for:

• for some searches, suggested subject categories appear in the right sidebar. For example, perform a keyword search on �Internet searching�. Beside the list of items found, is a note to �Try these too�Electronic Information Resource Searching, Web Search Engines.� Some nice suggestions for ya.
• The �Keep� box is nicely highlighted. Need to make a list of the resources you�ve found? Click on the Keep box and then click the Kept link. Same great feature as before but now easier to use!

More changes are on the horizon, watch this space!

5. BRAINwave of the month: Grab & Go with BRAINlinks!
Need to grab some sites and go? BRAINlinks can help! BRAINlinks is the Library�s new online collection of premium, hand-selected web content. Library staff members have carefully selected over 2,000 of the best web resources out there for the Mohawk community. Browse by subject or perform an advanced search to hone in on exactly the type of content you want. Then, when you�re ready, email, save or print your results! Here�s how:

1. First, perform a keyword search, browse by subject or use the advanced search if you know exactly what you want.
2. Then, click on the checkbox to the left of each search result you want to keep.
3. When you�re done collecting resources, click the link View Selections.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page to view your selections and verify that you want each one.
5. In the top part of the screen, enter your email address, select a download format and enter any comments.
6. Then click the button to Email, Print or Save your selections. For more help and screen shots, see the Help file.

Yes, it�s that simple to grab and go with BRAINlinks! No, we don�t offer fries with that.

6. Organizer!
I admit it. I do not own a PDA, camera phone or ipod shuffle. I do have a nice little jump drive and a Snoopy pez dispenser. Many people ask me, how do you survive without a phone that takes photos and plays music while simultaneously searching the Internet, especially in highly technical LibraryLand? I answer in one word: PocketMod. PocketMod is easy to use and configure and I won�t cry buckets if I lose it. I highly recommend the PocketMod for organizing all that life throws your way. Check out the handy calendar and writing guides (Lines version) �most useful!