For the past two years, I have had the pleasure (and occasional stress) of participating in the creation of a new subject repository for economics, Economists Online. Among other things, the Economists Online portal site lets visitors search through the academic output of 18 international organisations with expertise in economics, as well as contents from RePEc. It also organizes publications by author and includes data sets.

Economists Online was launched at last week's Subject Repositories conference in London (presentation slides are available). One of the project workpackages created a really cool booklet explaining the basics of the portal. And of course some of us attending the conference tweeted about it.

My job in the development and operation of the portal is mainly to support all participants as they implement the technical (metadata) guidelines. I am also involved in bug hunting and bug fix testing. Of course this gives me plenty of opportunity to play around with the portal services, so I can give you a quick overview of its main functions as I see them. (No, I wasn't paid for this post, this is just my opinion) Of course you could just read the booklet or check out the slides, but I like to give my own overview ...

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Trying to maintain the right contact information can be a bit of a drag. So I took the lazy way out and removed all the old links that pointed to my other pages. To replace those links, I put one little "contact" link on the right, and it simply leads to a blog post containing all relevant contact information. That post has a fake date so it is the oldest available entry, but I will update it whenever necessary. Or at least I will try to.

The most important update right now is my twitter info. You may have noticed the little Twitter widget on the right as well, but I never mentioned that I am finally tweeting more often than once a year.

Ja, ik ga er ook maar eens mee experimenteren. Zo vaak gebeurt het niet dat ik nog een klein beetje op tijd hoor over de laatste hype. Alleen jammer dat de eerste bestelling lang op zich liet wachten. Maar nu dan toch, een gezellige alien om mee te sjouwen.

Nu nog interessante mensen vinden met wie ik middels zo'n stukje hardware hun profielen/contactgegevens van sociale netwerken kan (en wil) uitwisselen.

Some of the most interesting ideas at work originate from our coffee breaks. This morning we were talking about a specific widget, which reminded me that I signed up for Widgetbox a while back. Widgetbox offers an easy way to create your own widgets. It can turn flash, html, javascript, and feeds into widgets. An interesting application is to turn a regular web page into a widget. I figured even I could do that.

Enter a very simple and first draft of a (very unofficial) "Tilburg University search widget", to be found at the bottom of the menu of this blog. It currently lets you initiate searches for three of our databases, to search for journals, books, or publications from Tilburg University Repository. Search is on all fields. It would probably be fairly simple to include selectable search fields as well.

This widget was made using html code that anyone can deduce from our search pages. So if you feel like experimenting and create even better widgets, let me know the results.

[This post is in Dutch, as it is a reply to another Dutch blogger's post. Perhaps the Google translation will be ok enough to get a general impression of what this is about.]

Een paar weken geleden zat ik achter Wouter in de schoolbanken tijdens de Ticer Summer School. Subtiel (nou ja) werd ik eraan herinnerd dat het al zo lang stil is op dit weblog. Nu hij dan ook nog eens Nederlandse bibliobloggers vraagt om iets over hun bloggen te vertellen moet ik natuurlijk wel iets schrijven. Gelukkig wist ik het wachtwoord nog om in te loggen ...

Wouter stelt een aantal vragen: "Waarom bloggen we, wie bereiken we er mee, lukt het om een community te bouwen, wat zijn je mooiste posts, of je populairste, hoe vaak kijk je naar je statistieken?" Eens kijken of ik ze kort kan beantwooren.

Waarom bloggen?
Ik blog vooral voor mezelf. In de allereerste post zei ik "Gewoon wat links en gedachten delen, dat lijkt me al mooi genoeg. Met een nadruk op handige software/sites en weetjes." Het "delen" is eigenlijk de kern. Het Internet/web bevat een enorme hoeveelheid informatie. Zinvol, minder zinvol, soms alleen maar onderhoudend, soms educatief. Heel af en toe denk ik dat ik ook iets te vertellen heb. Dat deel ik dan graag. Als iemand anders daar iets aan heeft is dat mooi. Als niemand er iets aan heeft heb ik het in elk geval gearchiveerd :)

Wie bereik ik?
Ik bereik niemand. Althans, niemand specifiek. Zo af en toe raakt een enkeling verdwaald op de site omdat Google toevallig naar een postje linkt.

Community opbouwen
Van een community is totaal geen sprake. Er is weinig interactie van en met lezers. Een community is eigenlijk ook niet het doel van dit weblog. Daarvoor is de opzet te beperkt. Het idee was en is om vooral tijdens mijn lunchpauzes op het werk te bloggen. Verrassend genoeg (niet dus) beperkt dit me aardig in de mogelijkheden om te bloggen. Soms maak ik er nog een weekendberichtje van.

Mooiste post
Momenteel heb ik geen enkele favoriete post. Als categorie vind ik vooral die posts leuk waar ik iets kan doen met trucs die toepasbaar zijn in de UvT-situatie.

Populairste post
Nu ik zo eens wat meer rondkijk zie ik dat het eigenlijk wel een verrassing is. Als ik op de statistieken afga zie ik een post die het meest bekeken is en posts die hoog gewaardeerd worden. De waardering geeft een vertekend beeld, dus die tel ik niet mee. Het aantal hits lijkt sterk vertekend door bezoeken van bots, dus ook die neem ik met een korrel zout. Afgaande op reacties op berichten en statistieken van bezoekers denk ik dat een van de oudste berichten ook de populairste is. Het is een post die uitlegt hoe je in Windows verwijderde bestanden kunt terughalen. Het lijkt erop dat veel mensen nogal makkelijk dingen onbedoeld deleten.

Statistieken
Hoe vaak ik naar statistieken kijk? Een keer per dag, soms twee. Even snel kijken of er misschien een bericht opvallend veel bekeken is. Het is altijd leuk om te zien dat hits toenemen omdat er iemand naar je linkt.

Zo, Wouter, kun je hier wat mee? Ik wel in elk geval. Deze oefening heeft me weer een beetje wakker gemaakt.

Worthington Libraries Programs to Go

Be afraid, be very afraid ... or just have fun watching. It is about time for us to start our own video production team. After all, Tilburg University's Library and IT Services has it all: library folks, IT people, and video production experts. Oh wait, perhaps we need a choreographer.

Found via Tame The Web.

The picture is quite blurry, but this is proof of today's excitement at Tilburg University Library. One of the boilers in the library caused a problem. A fire or smoldering resulted in smoke and a stench, after which the evacuation procedure went into effect.

I was in a different building when my pager went off - I am a member of the emergency response team - so it took me five minutes of a walk/run to get to the library. By then, most people were already outside. The fire department arrived soon after. The picture is of one of the fire trucks (in case you can't tell).(The picture is blurry because it was taken using my mobile phone. The battery of my pda died yesterday, so today I only had my phone on me. The upshot of a blurry picture is that it doesn't seem like I have to worry about privacy issues, I doubt anyone can be recognized in the picture. Still, if anyone in the picture objects, I will remove the picture. Just stop by my office (L 206) so I can tell you are actually in the picture.)

After an hour, the building was considered "safe" again, and people could go back inside. There doesn't seem to be any major damage, nobody got hurt and all books and computers are safe.

Last week on Tuesday we had a fire drill. That day I was also in a different building for yet another course. I think my courses are cursed. Too much running during work time, not exactly why I became a librarian ;)

My desk. Originally uploaded by Richard@work

Yes, my desk can be quite messy, but I can still find everything I need. Eventually ;)

(between Flickr's Blog This option and Nucleus' presentation, some layout changes are required to make this look kind of ok)

[Edit: even worse, when uploading this way, comments are off by default. Oops. Thanks to Wow!ter for the heads-up.]

Sometimes time flies. Without actually being aware of it, it turns out I have been experimenting with Meebome for half a month already. To be honest, the main experimenting was done between November and February, probably. These past months I usually did not bother to log in. With little visitors to the site there does not seem to be much of a point. Even more important, I don't usually notice when someone tries to chat. The meebome tab in Firefox will flash, but that is not intrusive enough to notice.

I use Gaim for my other IM and IRC accounts, so using the meebome widget in Gaim would be great. It turns out this is actually possible. A wiki post explains how. There is a problem though, as mentioned in a meebo forum: every time someone opens a chat, I have to add them to my buddy list. That won't really be a problem though, considering the limited number of chat requests I receive on a daily basis (an average of 0.01).

I will be attending days two and three of Ticer's Digital Libraries à la Carte 2007. Module 3 is a "must" for me, since I will have to use XML a lot. Right now my knowledge is limited, hopefully the course will help. Module 2 seems like a great way to get inspiration for more innovation at our library. Although perhaps a course on innovation should also include a course about time management. Even thinking about innovations is usually delayed because "regular work" takes up most of my time.

Edit: of course now I should remember to change my status when I go to meet a colleague ...

These past weeks, people have been working hard to install new fire alarms in our library. Throughout the building, openings in (lowered) ceilings can be seen. The area between the ceiling and the actual next level contains pipes, heating elements and electrical wiring.


When all this is over, we can feel even safer than before. In the meantime, the library ceiling on this floor looks like Swiss cheese.

Although I work close to the source, literally just a few doors away, I won't be the first one to mention Ticer's Digital Libraries à la Carte 2007 program. Last year I went to a very interesting hands-on day about Library 2.0. This year I plan to try and make it to at least one day, Module 3, "Open source software for libraries and XML". I see more interesting sessions listed, but I'll have to see what my boss thinks of all this :)

If you are interested in the future of the library (profession and services) then this course is definitely worthy of your attention. Check it out, I'm pretty sure you will find something interesting. If you do attend, feel free to stop by for a chat.

Google Maps recently introduced the My Maps feature. Users can create their own maps without any programming knowledge, by putting placemarkers, text and (very limited) drawings on a map. Since the text part of the map can also contain html code, it is possible to include photos and videos as well. The maps are hosted by Google and can be made private or public. Public maps are included in searches. More info in the user guide.

To experiment with this, I decided to revamp our university campus map. The result is only useful in hybrid or satellite view, as individual buildings do not show on the map view.

Some time in the, hopefully not very far, future, our library will undergo some necessary construction work. This has been in the works (no pun intended) for years and to be honest, is highly overdue (again, no pun intended). Regardless of what needs to be done, one thing is for sure: it would be good to keep our users informed.

A weblog can be a good way to inform users of the current state of affairs regarding construction work, in addition to more traditional media.

At least two other Dutch university libraries are currently using weblogs to communicate about their construction work: Erasmus University and Wageningen University. Both blogs seem to be in Dutch only. Noticing the Wageningen blog, the Erasmus blog asks "who's next?". Time to talk to our PR team.