Archive for August, 2009

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Wordpress Has Become The Monster Under The Bed That Keeps Me Awake At Night


2009
08.31

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I opened my Wordpress Dashboard today and began to feel a little overwhelmed when I realized how many blogs I maintain, am the administrator on, am a contributor on, and teach people how to create and use (along with familiarizing them with all aspects of the social web). Over the course of this year I have continuously taught faculty, students and staff how to blog in First Year Experience Seminars, LITE Workshops, Thursday@3 Workshops, and one-on-one sessions.

In my “off-time” I attempt to manage my own Wordpress installation and contemplate launching a WordPress MU and GoogleApps installation with my forever partner in crime Jerry Spiller.  I have officially decided WE ARE INSANE.  In an effort to figure out why I can’t sleep at night, I started counting…

MyBlogs

I blog and maintain:

  1. Qualitative Research Methods Course (2 Sections) that I teach after my day job
  2. jpvanarnhem.com (my art/process blog)
  3. LITE Workshops@Addlestone – An interdisciplinary Information Literacy Program I am producing with the help of Jerry Spiller, Sara Davis, and Jared Seay at the College of Charleston.

I contribute to:

  1. Polyphony, the College’s only multilingual magazine
  2. The Addlestone Report

I help design, organize content for, and provide instruction and assistance for numerous blogs, including:

  1. Friends of the Library
  2. Addlestone Library Technical Services
  3. Interlibrary Loan
  4. College of Charleston Eco Reps
  5. Student Computing Support
  6. Circulation and Shelving Department (Addlestone Library)
  7. Browsing Book Collection
  8. The Communications Museum – coming soon!

At one point I also supervised over 15 student blogs for my research methods course.  I no longer do this.  I now add them as authors to the course blog.  I highly recommend this option. I also manage the Yahoo Pipe for the Library News section of the website.

I have researched plugins, Planet, MAMP, and installing Wordpress MU on my localhost – I hate it when the directions start out “I don’t personally use the MAMP application nor do I condone its use…” AND they forget to tell you to change the port to .80 instead of 8888 and set application to correct subdirectory… I have also worked with a complete novice who impressed the heck out of me by her tenacity and ability editing and designing her own theme, on her own MAMP installation, no less.  Jerry says that means I am a really good teacher.  I think she was an incredible student.

None of this list takes into consideration any of my other activities: studio work, research, writing and trying to get publications, giving and trying to find presentations, or the time and energy I spend during my 8-5 life.

No wonder I can’t sleep at night.

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Using Pidgin at the Research Information Desk


2009
08.11

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Posted in Digital Culture, Library | No Comments »

The new library web site launched on Monday, August 10. Over the summer I have been assisting our Systems Librarian with the redesign.  After multiple meetings about whether or not the library should be on the homepage of our college (which has been dedicated to marketing to the outside world), and a final decision that yes, we should, we wanted to make sure to make the most of it.

One of the features we added was an embedded Meebo instant messaging (IM) widget, allowing patrons to initiate reference transactions with the reference desk by typing their questions directly into the widget. We thought this would be easy. As it turned out, it was more complicated than we had hoped.  Our biggest problem was that our Meebo widget was always offline because Trillian was unable to automatically authorize buddy requests. After working with LibH3lp, Trillian Pro, Trillian Astra, and others we finally wound up switching from using Trillian to using Pidgin at the desk to answer IM reference questions. Thanks to the wonderful people at UNC Libraries, we were able to solve our problem by using the the pidgin4lib plugin.

Pretty much all of last week and most of this week has been spent providing the ref desk staffers training in using Pidgin.  It seems to be going well.   For me,  I think I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about IM protocols this summer:)

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Playing around with Comeks.com


2009
08.03

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Posted in Digital Culture | No Comments »

I ran across an article at makeuseof.com (one of my absolute favorite sites that feeds the geekette in me) on Comeks.com By Abhijeet from Appscrazy.  It lets you create digital stickers with speech balloons you can share on your cell phone or other social networking apps.  Really fun for a 15 minute break.  I’ve been trying to find a sustainable practice that I can do in 15 minute increments.  I thought I would give it a try and sent my “creation” to Jerry, who came back with his own.

comekjoey

Here’s mine.  I was trying to describe my feelings about trying to come up with a sustainable art practice along with the rest of the obligations of my life.

comekjerry

Here is Jerry’s.  Much better at telling a story than mine.  I think he has a better sense of humor too:)

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