New Plymouth State University Mascot

Matt worked this up for our university portal today. Plymouth has long been the Panthers, but a little change does the University good. Panthers may have paws, but platypi have venom.

Launch!

A little more than two years after I realized how (really) bad the problem was and about 18 months after I prototyped my solution, our new library website, catalog, and knowledgebase launched last week — just in time for the fall semester opening.
It’s all built on Scriblio, includes a very simple new books list that [...]

Should Universities Host Faculty or Student Blogs? (part 1: examples and fear)

Our CIO is asking whether or not Plymouth should get involved with blogs. Not to be overly academic, but I think we should define our terms.

Despite all the talk, ā€œblogsā€ are a content agnostic technology being used to support all manner of online activities.

What you’re really asking is instead: what kind of content do we want to put online, and who do we want to let do it?

It’s Official

WPopac, a project I started on my nights and weekends, is now officially one of my day-job projects too.
We’ve been using our WPopac-based catalog as a prototype since February 2006, but the change not only allocates a portion of my work time specifically to the development of the project, but also reflects the library’s decision [...]

Tech Tuesdays: Spam Management

John Martin was kind enough to lead a session on spam management Tuesday (November 8th). Here was the description:
Spam is annoying and often offensive, but it’s a fact of life for all of us. John Martin will lead a discussion about how we can limit the amount of spam we see using tools running on [...]

Now Search Lamson Library at A9.com

A9, the search engine from Amazon.com, does some pretty interesting things that libraries should be aware of. First, any library considering a metasearch product should look at what can be done for free, and second, libraries should take a look at the OpenSearch technology that drives it.
So now, when searching for Harry Potter, you’ll also [...]