North Carolina Library Association

Welcome to a new series here on the NCLA Technology and Trends blog: Free Fridays! For July and August of 2016 (and maybe beyond – let us know what you think!), Technology and Trends Board Members will share free tools that we use and love each and every Friday. Subscribe or add us to your feed to keep up with the series!

For our inaugural Free Friday, let’s take a look at Hypothesis! According to their About us page, Hypothesis “leverages annotation to enable sentence-level critique or note-taking on top of news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation and more.” Here’s a screenshot of an annotation that a Hypothesis user added to their About Us page. Meta!

I started using this tool last summer when I was taking an online professional development course that involved lots of reading on the web – blogs posts, webpages, online articles, PDF documents, Word documents, etc. With Hypothesis, you can highlight and annotate all of these formats directly in your web browser.

I’m primarily a Google Chrome user, and Hypothesis is extra easy with Chrome – you can download a Chrome extension to launch anytime you want to annotate. In the image below, you can see the logo for the extension in the Chrome toolbar as well as the icons for annotation on the right, near the scroll bar.

Since it’s a web tool, Hypothesis works with other browsers as well – you can simply get a “bookmarklet” from their website and add it to your browser’s toolbar, then click it to launch the tool whenever you want to use it. If you have your own website and want to get feedback, you can also add Hypothesis to encourage people to highlight and annotate your site. Maybe something fun for all you usability testers out there to try!

Hypothesis does require an account, but it’s free and lets you keep track of your past annotations. You can see my annotation stream below:

The first two entries in my stream are simply highlights, while the third, from August 15, 2015, includes a highlight and my own personal note. You might notice the lock icon and the “Only me” designation. With Hypothesis, you can designate your highlights and annotations to be public or private. Public annotations are great for starting a conversation, but I often use the private setting so that I can easily keep track of my own notes.

Highlighting or annotating is a two-step process.

Step one: Select the text on the screen that you want to either highlight or annotate.

Step two: Choose either annotate or highlight. When you choose annotate, you get the option to add your notes and choose whether you want them to be public or private.

Hypothesis has been a great tool for me to use to keep track of professional reading. If you’ve tried it, share how you use it below!

-Jenny Dale, Chair, TNT RoundTable

Come back next Friday, July 8 for our next installment of Free Fridays!

Exploring Films on Demand: Streaming Video from NC LIVE

Reels by Sonny Abesamis on Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Do you want to learn more about NC LIVE’s Films on Demand streaming video

platform?

Participants will learn about the content provided, key features of the platform, and benefits to patrons, students, faculty, and library staff. After the webinar you should feel comfortable using the platform and informing your patrons and colleagues about the Films on Demand resource.

This webinar will be on Wed., June 29th at 2pm

If you’d like to register for this informative and FREE presentation, go to:

http://goo.gl/forms/ako6q8cUMgz3nhyu1

We hope to “see” you then!

We kicked off our 2015-2017 biennium webinar series with a great one on usability and user experience. Thanks to Daniel Pshock & Sarah Arnold of UNC Chapel Hill for sharing their wisdom!

You can find the recording online here.

Their slides are up on TNT’s slideshare:

Advocating for Usability: When, Why, and How to Improve User Experiences from nclatechandtrends

Keep checking back for announcements on our next webinar!

Thanks to newly minted TNT Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect Julie for sharing the details on this upcoming webinar series!

https://infopeople.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=536

Hi everyone,

The 2015 NCLA Conference is next week, and TNT has some great programming lined up. Check out full list of programs on the Conference website and log in to create your own personal schedule!

TNT has sponsored several programs at this year’s conference! Check out the list below or download the PDF here: TNT flyer NCLA 2015

Please note that we will be holding a business meeting on Thursday from 5:15-6:30, where we will be holding elections for next year’s executive board. Please come to vote and bring your ideas for programming, events, etc. We hope to see you there!

Tuesday, October 20 (Preconference)

1:30-4:30 – Social Media Hacks: Tips & Conversation for Enhancing Social Media Use in Libraries (Auditorium II)

Wednesday, October 21

8:45-9:45am Academic Library Websites as Information Gateways: Prioritizing User Needs in Website Evaluation and (Re)Design (Pebble Beach)

11:30-12:15 – Poster – The Top 10 Things I Wish I Had Known Before RFID; A Public Library’s View on RFID (Outside Exhibit Hall)

1:00-2:00 – Reaching Digital Readers Where They Are (Tanglewood)

2:15-3:15 – tl;dr: Enhancing Students’ Online Research, Reading, and Writing Practices with ProQuest Flow (Tidewater)

4:00-5:00 – Women in Technology in Libraries: A Panel Discussion (Co-Sponsored with WILR) (Arrowhead)

Thursday, October 22

4:00-5:00 – Top Tech Trends 2015 (Pebble Beach)

5:15-6:30 – Business Meeting  (Augusta B)

The State Library and its Continuing Education Advisory Committee (CEAC) invite you to participate in a new Continuing Education survey.  The purpose of this survey is to collect information that the CEAC will use to recommend a continuing education plan for 2015-2016.  Your responses will help the State Library identify the most important topics and set training priorities for the coming year.  The survey is anonymous, quick, and open to everyone in the NC library community!

We want to hear from NC library staff in all types of libraries so please share this announcement and the CE survey link with others in the NC library community.  This year’s CE survey will close on Friday, August 14^th.  Please contact CE Consultant, Kelly Brannock, at the State Library if you have any questions.

Thanks for sharing your opinion!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CE_statewide2015

Technology & Trends (TNT) Round table is gearing up for new series of webinars and we would love to hear from you! Please take a few minutes to complete our short survey at http://tinyurl.com/tntideas.  Whether you have a topic to suggest or you would like volunteer to present, please let us know. Thanks!

The Technology and Trends Round Table would like to invite you to join us for the next installment in our webinar series – Top Sites Offering Free Online Courses for Higher Ed Level Instruction.

Presenter: Susan Bridgers

When: Wednesday, July 30 at Noon

This is a survey of the top free online learning providers currently offering university level or gateway instruction. The presentation provides a short description of each and the indication of their topic category strengths. Whether you are interested in furthering your own education, learning something new just for fun, or being better equipped to help your patrons in this area, you will be sure to find useful information in this webinar.

Please RSVP online before Wednesday, July 30 at 9am. Instructions and links will be sent out when registration is closed.

If you have any questions, please contact Jenny Dale at jedale2[at]uncg.edu.

We hope to see you there!

Thanks so much to Kate McNamara for presenting “How to be a Tumblarian” for TNT on July 9! 

If you missed Kate’s presentation, never fear! There is a recording available online.  

In addition to the presentation, Kate recommends these links:

nclibrarytest.tumblr.com (test blog used during the session)

thelifeguardlibrarian.tumblr.com (list of tumblarians)

http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/google_analytics (add google analytics to your page)

http://themesbyeris.tumblr.com/tutorial01 (guide to coding and designing your own tumblr page with html (advanced))

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tumblr-savior/oefddkjnflmjbclpnnoegglmmdfkidip (tumblr savior add-on for Chrome (you can also get it for Firefox) allows you to block posts with certain tags).

If you couldn’t make our most recent webinar, Creating and Using Digital Learning Objects for Library Instruction, presented by Marc Bess, don’t worry! We’ve got Marc’s slides up as well as a recording of the full session, including demonstrations and Q & A!

 

TNT Webinar: Creating and Using Digital Learning Objects for Library Instruction from nclatechandtrends

Join us for our next webinar, How to be a Tumblarian, coming at you on Wednesday, July 9 at 12noon!