November 19, 2009
This may change my life
Readability is a cool little tool that lets you focus in on the text of a web site-- not the ads, not the little videos that start without your consent, and not all of the weird frames and stuff that make it so annoying to read and print some articles online.
It's super-easy to customize and install. Click here. Pick the font style, font size, and margin width that you like. Then drag a button to where you want it to live in your web browser. Walla, you're done.
Then, the next time that you're trying to read an article and can barely navigate through the clutter, just press that button, and all of the junk will go away.
Posted by KellyAddleman at 3:25 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2009
Free files online that you can use
Yesterday, ProfHacker did a great post about finding content with particular kinds of Creative Commons licenses. If you watched the video I posted last week about copyright and fair use, you might be interested in finding media that you can use ethically without having to jump through a lot of hoops.
Here's the original ProfHacker post about finding image files that you're allowed to use: http://www.profhacker.com/2009/10/20/where-all-the-purty-pictures-come-from-flickr-creative-commons/
And here's yesterday's post, which explains the process a little more: http://www.profhacker.com/2009/11/10/how-to-find-free-online-content-that-youre-allowed-to-re-use/
Happy hunting, scavenging, and re-purposing!
Posted by KellyAddleman at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)
November 9, 2009
Reusing the leftovers
A lot of people ask us what happens to the books that are left over after the annual book sale. In the past, we've made efforts to give those unsold books to local organizations or charities, but this year, we've done something different. We sent the leftover items to Better World Books.
Better World Books is an organization that partners with libraries to give unwanted books a good home. If you frequently purchase used books from Amazon.com, you may have actually received a title or two from them (I have). BWB works sort of like a consignment service; they sent us boxes, we packaged up the books we wanted to send, and they covered the shipping costs for us to send the books to them.
BWB will then try to sell the books. Any books that are not sold after a reasonable time period will be recycled-- no books are ever thrown away. The money received from any sales will be split; a percentage will be accrued to our account, with a check being mailed to the library; a portion of the price will go to Better World Books to cover their costs associated with the services; and the remainder will go to one of BWB's literacy partners. We chose for our books to benefit Worldfund, a group that strives to improve education in Latin America.
We've very excited about this program and hope the opportunity we have to make a difference, avoid books going to a landfill, and even get a little cash back in the library coffers to help pay for those cookies during finals week. Go check out the Better World Books website and browse around-- you might find some great books for a great price!
Posted by KellyAddleman at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)
November 5, 2009
A quick primer on fair use
I'm currently participating in the ELITE training program at SHU, and our most recent assignment was to create a movie in ScreenFlow. Here's the 6-minute guide that I created about plagiarism, copyright, and fair use. The file is too large to embed here, but click on the link below and you should be able to access the movie.
http://files.me.com/kellyaddleman/poav3j.mov
Posted by KellyAddleman at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
November 4, 2009
Scrooge Lives!
It's frightening that there are actually people with this type of mindset!
Ugly battle has librarians in Oak Brook turning to Teamsters
Posted by DavidStanley at 2:38 PM | Comments (1)