Beat the February Blahs at the Blog

February can be cold, cruel and downright curmudgeonly! (I�ve been waiting years to use that word.) But it doesn�t have to be! Dive in to the BRAIN_blog to learn about exciting new developments in the Library and web world and chase those winter blahs away! In this issue: 1) another must-read from EDUCAUSE: The 2006 Horizon Report�find out what your students will be doing with technology and learning 5 years from now, 2) fun in the lab with Safari Tech Books, 3) another neat-o music recommender web site, 4) free articles from HighBeam, 5) EBSCOhost soon to deliver new searching treat, 6) Web 2.0 and why you should care and 7) Francesca�s Digital Dish.


Test Your Trivia Knowledge
Test your trivia knowledge at any of the Library campuses by viewing our trivia show on the display computers (and also in the rotunda in the e-Library.) What country�s citizens have the longest life expectancy? How many people in Hamilton walk to work? I know you�re itching to know the answers�well, stroll over to the Library and see the answers appear right before your very eyes as well as more exciting brain teasers! [Inset photo: the trivia show in action in the e-Library rotunda! Will the fun never stop?]

1) Crystal Balling It
A new report has been released at EDUCAUSE, authored by EDUCAUSE and the New Media Consortium: The 2006 Horizon Report. Here are the goods straight from the EDUCAUSE site:
�Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons: a year or less, two to three years, and four to five years. The areas of emerging technology cited for 2006 are:� Social computing� Personal broadcasting� Cell-phone-accessible educational content and services� Educational gaming� Augmented reality and enhanced visualization� Context-aware environments and devicesEach section of the report provides live Web links to example applications and additional readings.�

2) Fun in the lab!
In the web world, �labs� are experimentation spaces where folks test out new features and services. Google Labs is one of the more popular labs that you may have heard of. No, there are no virtual rats running around, but you can see what the fine Google folks are working on by visiting the “lab”. Well, get out your lab coat because now, the Library�s ebook database Safari Tech Books has launched its very own lab! Watch and participate as the Safari people work on new features to make Safari a better experience for you. [Need a refresher on Safari? It�s the fab collection of electronic books on the topics of business and technology available on the TheBRAIN. Thousands of books available for you to search! Updated every month with the latest and greatest tech and business books!) Check out the Safari labs to see what they are up to (there is a link on the home page of Safari.) Some of the things they are cooking up in the labs are: Safari Guides: �each Safari Guide briefly introduces a topic or a problem and provides links into sections of different books on Safari, resulting in additional information or a solution; Related Articles: currently in Beta release, [the] Related Articles will feature O’Reilly Network and IBM developerWorks as [the] first sources for this editorial content� and more! Check it out and let Safari know what you think�there are lots of opportunities to submit feedback!

3) Get out there and dance!
Get out your dancing shoes because we have another fine music recommender system to show you�Last.fm! Not as simple and easy to use as the Pandora system we told you about a couple of months ago, but neat-o nonetheless. Like Pandora, Last.fm prompts you to enter the name of an artist and then plays the music of similar artists. The suggestions are pretty much spot-on. While Pandora is a recommender system, Last.fm is a recommender system plus social software. That means that you can share your favourite music with others and get information about other people�s musical preferences. In addition, the site features information about artists, weekly popularity charts, forums, personalization options such as a personal profile and the ability to tag songs you like. Dancing and so much more!

4) More exciting freebies!
HighBeam is a database of full-text articles that offers access to articles for a fee. Now it has made a substantial amount of its database free – a whopping 1.5 million of these babies that come from more than 300 sources. Some of this stuff goes back 20 years (and some only 2 or 3.) Examples of available titles are BusinessWire, Financial Management, Science News, and USA Today. You don’t even have to log in! Holy Moly! To get in on all this free stuff, conduct a search…you’ll see labels on the articles in your result list indicating if they are free or fee. Want to zone in on only the free items? Click on a link in the sidebar to limit to the free articles only.

5) Coming soon! Visual search in EBSCOhost!
The popular Library magazine and journal databases from EBSCOhost will soon feature a visual search engine! Visual search engines present your search results in a visual display so that you can see relationships between concepts or search result items. This is exciting stuff! Watch this space for further info! Need more info on visual search…see our tutorial!

6) What Is Web2.0 And Why You Should Give A Dang
Lately there has been a lot of buzz about Web2.0. Just what the bejeebers is this and why should we care, here in collegeland? First, a definition of Web 2.0. This explanation, taken from the web site of a guru in LibraryLand, Stephen Abram describes it rather nicely:��Web 2.0 is ultimately about a social phenomenon – not just about networked social experiences but about the distribution and creation of Web content itself, �characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and reuse, and the market as a conversation.� Basically, this means that instead of our students being able to go online and simply read stuff, they now go online and create stuff, repurpose stuff, collaborate with others to build stuff, and pretty much, play a big role in creating and adding content to the web. More about Web 2.0 can be found at this excellent article by Tim O�Reilly of O�Reilly publisher fame.

Still not sure what I�m nattering on about? Suppose students actively participate in creating course content by, for instance, blogging and using social bookmarking applications to share content�this would be an example of Web 2.0 in action! Want more ideas of how Web 2.0 can be integrated into your teaching? See the blog Weblogg-ed for a constant stream of examples! Also, the EDUCAUSE Horizon report noted above has a nice section on social computing � check �er out!

7) Francesca�s Digital Dish
It�s that wonderful time of year when everyone is just getting over a cold, or nursing a cold, or coming down with a cold, myself included! While health is foremost on our minds, I thought I�d share with you a very useful, health education resource. It�s called The Health Education Assets Library (HEAL). HEAL is a digital library that provides freely accessible digital teaching resources for health sciences educators and learners. You can navigate through HEAL Peer-Reviewed resources, or their Affiliate Collections, and one of the best features of HEAL are the free multimedia resources that are available on their server. Sign-up is necessary to access the information, and you do have to submit a valid email address and fill in a brief online registration form. But after that, your access is ready to go and free of charge.

For health sciences gurus and for the rest of us, here�s a tip that can help you make the most of your Library @ Mohawk database searches: Limiters let you narrow the focus of your search so that the information retrieved from the databases you search is limited according to the values you�ve selected. You can use more than one limiter if more than one is available. Common limiters that you can choose from include:

• Full Text
• Cover Story
• Local Titles
• Journal/Magazine
• Peer Reviewed
• Date Published
• Number of Pages

Keep in mind that limiters do limit one another. If you select both Full Text and Cover Story limiters, the results that are retrieved include only Full Text items that are Cover Story items. Limiters are valuable �sieves� for your search results. Without them, you may end up navigating an overwhelming amount of information. For more help, you can email us at braintogo@mohawkcollege.ca, or IM us at braintogo@hotmail.com or braintogo@yahoo.ca with your questions.

Next week we�ll discuss database search expanders (hint: it has nothing to do with overeating during the holidays…)