Cool YouTube Video on Visual Data/Statistics

"Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four"


This short video by Hans Rosling rocks! Statistics can be dull, cumbersome, and complex, but he succeeds in making them interesting, relatively simple, and relevant.  Indeed, he infuses a large dosage of hope regarding the future of our world with his concluding remarks.

Information literacy involves knowing when you need information, knowing how to access it, and applying the information ethically and effectively.  Sometimes we need statistics.  Each country gathers demographic data differently.  In a recent trip to Canada I learned that Canadian statistics can be aggravating to find and interpret.  In fact, one individual lamented that some of the census data did not continue from one iteration to another.  They changed the questions, so graduate students looking for longitudinal information in a particular area could not be extracted.

My sense is that U.S. statistics may include some of these same frustrating flaws as far as research goes.  In case you may be interested in finding U.S. statistics, take a look at our resource page.  Find links to the Census Bureau, FedStats, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics includes the Occupational Outlook Handbook and a site with career information for high school students.  I have always like the Statistical Abstract of the United States when looking for quick statistics.

Succeed in the Oboler Library

Watch this longer video, which gives more in-depth information about ISU's Eli M. Oboler Library while also trying to mix in a little humor periodically. The characters' voices are machine-automated, so they sound a bit panned, or artificial. The video creator did forget to say that the reference desk is only open until 9:00 p.m. on regular weekdays.

Finding Full-text Theses & Dissertations

A week or two ago one of my colleagues made me aware of a site that can help you find the full text to a thesis or dissertation. If she is helping someone at the reference desk who needs a thesis, she will look here before advising them to request a copy via our Interlibrary Loan department.

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations's website states: "The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination and preservation of electronic analogues to the traditional paper-based theses and dissertations."

Once you get there, select the following words in the box: "for Researchers: Find ETDs." Presumably, ETD stands for "electronic theses and dissertations." On the Find ETDs page you will see options for searching, browsing, and contributing to the archive as well as various possibilities for interfaces. The VTLS Visualizer hyperlink will take you to a search interface where you can plug your search terms in the box and do some hunting.

If this tool is not sufficient, you might look for the Dissertations & Theses A&I database. Most academic institutions purchase access to this database, since it can be immensely useful for graduate and faculty research. It's great for searching; however, it just provides abstracts, 24-page previews, and the option to purchase a copy in various formats..

Now I have one more thing to show graduate students in future workshops--as if I did not have enough already!

Finding Dissertations & Theses

In the last two months I have been working on a tutorial that incorporates an audio component. The Instructional Technology Resource Center or ITRC helped me download Adobe Presenter software, which allows me to add audio to a PowerPoint Presentation. They allow faculty and staff on campus to publish these audio presentations to their servers.

It really was not as difficult as I feared that it would be. I created a tutorial on finding dissertations and theses at Idaho State University: http://breeze1.isu.edu/dissertations. It begins with a brief overview of the the ProQuest database, Dissertations and Theses--A&I, which can really be a useful source for finding graduate studies on all kinds of subjects. Abstracts and full citations appear with other information, such as the names of committee members. They also provide options for purchasing a copy in various formats, beginning at $34.00. It is a good place to start when doing graduate research and discovering research that has already been done, so you do not duplicate your efforts.

Then I go through the steps of securing a dissertation via Interlibrary Loan. Colleagues in the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) department like to emphasize that a thesis or dissertation is considered a book, and requestors need to remember this.

Not all institutions allow their theses and dissertations to be borrowed; however, researchers do have the opportunity to purchase a copy through the Dissertation Service. They just need to fill out a Purchase a Thesis/Dissertation Form. A photocopy of the book will be made and sent to the proper persons; their university account will be billed $29.00.

Finally, I conclude the tutorial with tips on how to found in-house theses and dissertations at ISU's Oboler Library. The Library's catalog still serves as a great tool (and probably the only tool) for browsing ISU's theses and dissertations online. Using keywords such as "thesis 'idaho state'" will allow anyone to browse all the theses and dissertations. It so happens that even for the dissertations the keyword "thesis" works, since the bibliographic record contains a note, saying it is a "Thesis" for a doctoral degree, or a doctoral thesis.

If grad students or faculty want to limit the results to a specific department, then they can just add the name of that department to the Keyword Boolean or Quick search: "thesis 'idaho state' anthropology." This will retrieve more results than a search on the subject heading. For example, "Dissertations, Academic--Idaho State University. Dept. of Political Science" will only retrieve 21 results, yet a Keyword Boolean search for "thesis and 'idaho state' and 'political science'" will yield 60 results. The subject headings are still relatively new, so if you also want the older titles written by former students I recommend this second search.

The tutorial, "How Can I Find Dissertations: Using ISU's Resources to Conduct More Exhaustive Research" lasts for twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds (12:32). Take a look at it and let me know what you think.

Photo-Sharing Pathfinder

The following links may be useful in helping you to quickly learn how to share your photos with friends, co-workers, students, etc. A majority of these links were used in a Web 2.0 workshop on photo sharing, which was given in the Eli M. Oboler Library on December 11, 2007. A brief description and or title accompany each hyperlink.

What is photo sharing?

· Quick Online Tips says: “Flickr is a revolution in photo storage, sharing and organization, making image management an easy, natural and collaborative process. Get comments, notes, and tags on your photos, post to any blog, share and chat live and more! Flickr claims to be the best online image management and photo sharing application.

“If you are a Flickr newbie, read How to get the most out of Flickr, Tips for Flickr Beginners and the Official FAQ. You can also combine Picassa and Gmail to upload photos to Flickr, turn your blog into a moblog and listen to the Flickr Song. Did you know the most popular camera on Flickr was the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT.”

The rest of the page offers links to official Flickr tools and third-party tools for Flickr.

· Notice the link above titled, "How to Get the Most Out of Flickr." It tells you some of the potential uses for Flickr. It can tell you how to use Flickr with your blog, cameraphone, RSS feeds, etc. Also, the page gives instructions on how to organize your photos, create a group for a wedding, reunion, or event, and share private photos with family and friends.

Which photo-sharing services are the best?

· Many like their Flickr.com accounts: Webware Article. This link points to an article written November 13, 2007 and announces the fact that 2 billion photos had been uploaded to Flickr.com. They mention that Photobucket and Facebook sites had already reached that milestone months ago.

· Some prefer Picasa Web Albums: Picasa vs Flickr. Rob Neville shares his opinion that Picasaweb surpasses Flickr in its ease of use, user-friendly features, and its off-line editing program.

· Still, others choose different services: Web Photo Sharing Site Faceoff. While this article is rather dated as far as technology and Web2.0 are concerned (Sept. 5, 2005), it does name 14 photo-sharing services one can choose from. A couple of graphs lay out the data, showing the capabilities of each service for easy comparison.

· There are lots to choose from: Online photo sharing for snapshot photographers. Here you can look at a graph that rates 21 photo-sharing services, while also detailing storage space, fees, viewer experience, uploading management, file types, resolution, and special features. After checking the links for each service I discovered that three no longer work: AGFAPHOTO, Image Station, and Yahoo! Photo. The AGFA link would not load. Image Station will no longer accept new members; its site officially closes February 1, 2008. Yahoo! Photo died, because Yahoo! decided to devote all its photo-sharing energies to Flickr—it’s more popular and successful service.

· In this YouTube video (requires high-speed internet to view) a young, computer-savvy person discusses the question of which photo-sharing service is the best. He ventures to say that it depends on what you want to do with your photos and where your friends are. Additionally, he recommends that you save your digital photos on several photo-sharing websites, since one site may vanish at any given time: Best Photo Sharing Site. [Chances are that Picasa and Flickr will be around for a long time, as well as photo-sharing sites backed by large corporations.] Length of time: 1:31.

Getting started with photo-sharing services, or how is it done?

· Note: high-speed internet may be necessary to access and view the following video clips.

· See YouTube clip title “ Using Picasa – Part 1”: Picasa 2 (newest verion) can be downloaded at the following website: http://picasa.google.com/download/index.html. The video lasts seven minutes fifteen seconds (7:15), and it shows you how to get started with the Picasa desktop program for working with digital photos.

· “ Using Picasa – Part 2”: In this second video, you can learn how to create web albums, email photos, print photos, order photos, select photos, and transfer photos from your camera. It is well-done and focused on the task at hand. Length of time: 8:33.

· This YouTube video clip stars a young man who explains how to use Picasa in very straightforward terms: Jasonthenerd. Length of time: 9:13.

Future impact of Social Networking:

· This blog includes the comments of a panel of experts on the future of social networking. It does focus more on the relationship between this phenomenon and libraries than on society as a whole.

RSS Feeds, Websites, and Blogs:

· It is possible to upload photos to your Flickr.com account and create an RSS feed that updates photos on your website or blog in real time. This could potentially save on staff time by circumnavigating the webmaster; whether your administration trusts you enough to do that may be another matter.

On resizing photos:

Learning how to resize photos has been a real challenge for me, and I confess that I still am not sure exactly how to do this. It may be necessary to purchase or download an editing program in addition to Picasa to resize photos. The first link below includes some programs with reviews that can edit photos and potentially resize them.

1. Edit photos and resize them with these programs.

2. Discussion on Picasa-Help page regarding resizing photos and how many pixels to keep for optimal resolution.

3. More on resizing within Picasa Web Albums.

4. Picasa-Help links about how to resize photos using Picasa Web Albums.

Please offer me any feedback you have regarding the content in this post, my workshop, information-literacy topic, or social networking issue.