Pesenters:John Curry, Oklahoma State University; Susan Stansberry, Oklahoma State University
Description: This presentation detail the experience of a large Midwestern university’s challenge in merging a thriving School Library Media program with the revival of an Educational Technology program. The presentation focuses on two main issues: alignment of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards and the School Media and Education Technology Specialists (SMETS) standards, and a comparison of the existing educational technology programs. Milestones, challenges and administrative issues will be chronicled and discussed.
The BOSS, at Oklahoma State University’s library, is the Big Orange Search System. It’s an alternative online card catalog, one that shows users not just the university’s holdings but a constellation of related search terms, any one of which might lead a user to information gold.
The system uses a technology called “faceted search,” which features options to refine results and narrow things down. It also lets a user broaden a search using a “word cloud”: terms that surround the original search text and consist of associations, spelling variations, translations, and words a user has already tried.
Oklahoma’s colors tend toward the orange, hence the search engine’s nickname. That information, however, didn’t come up in a BOSS search when a user typed in “Big Orange.” It was on the university’s Web site, though. No search algorithm is perfect. —Josh Fischman
Oklahoma writer Angie Debo became something of a controversial figure early in the 20th century. She was a scholar who, as she once said, sought “to discover the truth and publish it.” She did and not everyone liked it.
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There was no high school for her to attend until one opened at Marshall. She rode her pony three and one-half miles to high school, but classes lasted only one year. As Debo later recalled, “there was no library, no magazines, and only the one book our parents managed to buy for each of us children as a Christmas present
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Her next book was The Road To Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians published by the OU Press in 1941. It was a carefully researched book telling the story of the Creeks from their aboriginal beginnings to the loss of their political independence during the first decade of the 20th century.
Her book served as a basis for a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which important land rights for the Creek nation were recognized. Debo’s next book was Still the Waters Run describing the theft from Indians of their lands in Indian Territory. State officials refused to permit the book to be published in Oklahoma.
In 1940, it was published by Princeton University Press. Debo was then 50. Debo recalled that from that point on no state university would hire her. She returned to teaching in rural Oklahoma schools. During World War II she served as pastor of the Methodist church in Marshall. In 1947, however, Oklahoma State University hired Debo as curator of maps in its library, a position she held until 1955.
You no longer have to wait in the library for the inconsiderate bastards who are looking at their friends’ facebook pictures to get off the computer so you can finish that important assignment.
Oklahoma State University (OSU) Library has chosen AquaBrowser Library—the intelligent visual OPAC--to be implemented with their Endeavor Voyager ILS.
The Stillwater Campus will be the first to implement AquaBrowser, with the rest of the Oklahoma A&M Library System to follow later.
OSU Associate Dean for Collection and Technology Services Anne Prestamo said, "We believe that AquaBrowser offers the simplicity of the Google search experience, with greatly enhanced tools for expanding or refining results via the Word Cloud, and the Refine Options that appear on the right hand side of the screen. Unbeknownst to the patron, all of the rich MARC data we've spent years and countless dollars creating is being exploited to its fullest, enabling AquaBrowser to present relevancy ranked results along with clear, accessible options for refining result sets."
Prestamo continued, "Libraries face stiff competition from Web-based resources. Our students don't want to search; they want to find. They want the search to be easy and fast, yet at the same time, powerful and accurate. Online shopping sites have conditioned us to expect sophisticated tools to refine and manipulate our results. We believe Aquabrowser meets all of these expectations."
TLC Senior Vice President Gar Sydnor commented, "There has been a lot of discussion lately about creating better search tools some day and improving today's OPAC experience. We appreciate the fact that OSU recognizes that AquaBrowser Library can deliver on these promises right now. We welcome OSU, and we hope more libraries will discover the same in the weeks to come."
AquaBrowser Library is the only visual OPAC in the U.S. that has been implemented in over 100 libraries. Visit www.TLCdelivers.com/aquabrowser to learn more.
Remember GPO's Subject Bibliographies Index? Browse Topics, an online finding tool, organizes US government websites using the index headings from the Subject Bibliographies Index as the basis for the site's main topic list. Browse Topics is managed by Oklahoma State University Edmon Low Library. Great job!
...My name is Beth Reiten, and I’m an associate professor in the Digital Library Services department at Oklahoma State University’s library. DLS is a wonderful name for a department, as it gives us the ability to be and do whatever suits us!
Currently, I work with all aspects of remote access: I’m the library’s web editor, I support distance learning, work with the databases, our Central Search federated search implementation, offer phone/email/IM reference and technical support, and I’m the EndNote Queen, just for a few examples.
In addition to this being my first ACRL conference, this is the first conference I’ve been to in years where I get to just attend – I have no responsibilities, other than learning – and I’m planning on taking advantage of it!...
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