I am extremely happy with Windows 7.

I downloaded the BETA version back in January when it came out, installing it on my old laptop as a direct replacement for Vista. Despite coming packaged with the Laptop I bought two years ago, Vista was running like Gordon Brown’s mind, slow and unable to react. This was despite numerous re-installs and a threat to retro step back to WinXP.

The installation of Windows 7 took forever, making me instantly regret making the choice. However after two months of using it, I haven’t looked back at all! It is important to point out that graphically the look of Windows 7 does not really differ to Vista. The themes are very similar and the Start Menu is near identical.

However everything is so much more smoother and customisable. As the screenshots show, I was able to make everything a glaring red with just a few clicks of the mouse. The quick launch toolbar found next to the start menu is also more user friendly; programs can be ‘pinned’ or ‘unpinned’ to it by a simple click and drag, removing the ‘open folder’ technique we all use in XP. The launch icons will also glow if the application is already open, as well as display small open application windows when you run your mouse over the icon.

Visually the system is Vista with a few improvements. However the major benefit is that it runs superbly even on system which struggled with Vista. My laptop runs on a 1.6 AMD dual core, 1gb ram, 120gb Sata HDD. This was only just good enough to run Vista effectively (despite having the Vista sticker!), but Windows 7 boots and runs twice as fast despite being the newer product.

I understand that Microsoft will release the same varience of systems that Vista provided, but will also turn their attentions to the Netbook world. If this product maintains its stability over to this platform, I really can’t see how anybody will be able to compete. It will really break my heart when I will have to stop using 7 in August, it means I will have three realistic choices: Buy a new laptop, revert back to Vista, or spend lots of money on the commercial release!

Posted on the Bath Spa Shibboleth project WIKI:

Yesterday I attended an Access Management Federation event in Bristol. The Federation promotes the use of the Shibboleth framework after the JISC withdrew its funding for Athens in July 2008.

One of the most useful documents provided on the day was the Uk Federation Quick Reference Guide, which presents an overview of useful documents available to Librarians and IT staff, from making a business case to installing and setting up your institution as an identity provider. Below is a URL to all of these resources:

http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/content/Documents

A lot of this information is highly useful; there are case studies of institutions that have implemented Shibboleth as well as technical documents detailing the installation method of Shibboleth.

Another superb resource is Janet’s EdLab, a portal containing a variety of media on a range of topics to support their events, as well as a discussion forum for users. The Federation now has its own dedicated space on the site, with a wide range of discussion and document download opportunities surrounding Shibboleth implementation.

One important point that came out of the event was how Shibboleth can benefit institutions as a whole. It has been easy thus far for me to consider single sign-on only as a direct benefit to Library services. However at Bath Spa there are many different systems that may benefit from the security that Shib provides. For example the University has been looking at a repository for some time. Once implememented, Shibboleth could be used to provide access for other institutions that may need to get involved. I understand also that our VLE is hosted elsewhere; Shib could control the amount of information on students that is transferred off campus for authentication.

By joining the Federation and opting with Shibboleth we are agreeing with the rules of membership. As a result we are required to consider how well we deal with personal data at the University:

all and any Data, when provided to the Federation Operator or
another Member (as the case may be), are accurate and up-todate
and any changes to Metadata are promptly provided to the
Federation Operator;

We should have the system in place to make sure that the information we hold is accurate an up to date; does the SITS system at the University update active directory? Many IT professionals at the event talked about the ease in which a simple script can update active directory via an export from an enrolment system.

A major theme was to consider how students/staff will be authenticated to use external resources. From the Library’s point of view we would need a service provider to be able to dicipher between user groups, as some resources are only available to staff at the University. If you the University continues to expand we may also need to assertain the school that as student belongs to. Service providers would also like to assertain whether a student is viable to access a resource, i.e enrolment may have taken place but the student is yet to pay tuition!

There may also need to be some change in our own authentication culture. The set-up of a single sign-on means that students and staff use only one username/password to access a very wide range of systems. As a result we may have to review how often passwords are changed at the University, as authentication relies so heavily on this one log-in.

From a technical point of view there were some interesting discussions, some of which I didn’t understand! However there exists a simple Windows (wizard-like) installer to set-up Shibboleth in a Windows environment, through which installation was presented as easy. This installs Shib 1.3 and therefore may only be useful for testing, as the federation has now moved on to support Shib 2.0. Apparently an installer for Shib 2 is being developed in the open source community. It was unclear whether Shib can run on Windows server 2008, so we may need to discuss whether this will become an issue.

Overall the Federation provided a clear message: if you choose to install Shibboleth they will hold our hand and support us through every step of implementation. If we opt for a third party solution (i.e OpenAthens LA 2.0), we are on our own!

The next step for me is to work out how many of our Electronic subscriptions are ‘Shibbolised’, as this will give us a very clear indication of how essential this project is overall.

Tags: Athens, Authentication, shibboleth

Two weeks ago we bought two eBook readers to trial at work. The intention is to see how viable technologies such as this are for University students of the future, particularly as we already buy eBooks through our supplier, Dawsonera.

After just under a week of playing of the device I have to admit I am suitably impressed; the PRS-505 to start with is beautiful to look at, housed in a leather wallet which provides the studious smell you get from leather bound books. Sony also provides 100 free classic books, but these can be accessed for free anyway!

The screen is superb; I have been able to read from it without any of the strain on the eyes experienced from LCD screens. The device can also be tilted at many different angles and the reader can still view the text, something near impossible when reading from a laptop screen.

Accessibility is good, users can simply zoom in and out of the text with the touch of a button. I was also able to bookmark without any issue, as the device will save multiple pages across multiple books. The battery is impressive to – I have used it now for around 4-5 hours with no visual drop in battery life, despite only having an hours’ charge time so far.

The only drawback is that Sony requires you to install software in order to transfer books onto the device, something which many have come to detest with some MP3 players. It would be nice to see an updated version at some point, providing a simple ‘drag and drop’ set-up in Windows explorer.

Seeing this as a viable alternative for students is very challenging. The eBooks we buy are hosted through our suppliers site, as licencing issues mean that a system has to be in place for digital rights management. Making eBook texbooks available on these devices would mean years of complex negotiation with publishers, but I am sure this negotiation has already started.

A full review of this product will follow shortly. All members of Library staff will have the opportunity to try them out over the next few months, with a short questionnaire to complete.

I travelled to Birmingham on Wednesday for an event introducing Eduserv’s new single-sign on product, OpenAthens LA 2.0.

The slides for the event:

The product was presented as a sequel to AthensDA (Devolved Authentication), launched in 2002, well used by Universities/ FE Colleges in the UK.

Some important points that were brought up at the conference:

1. Currently only 40% of electronic resource providers in the UK support Shibboleth, causing a great deal of complication for Shibboleth as a single-sign on solution.
2. Statistics are almost non-existent in Shibboleth. Librarians/ IT staff currently have to make sense of the endless log data in order to work out how often their resources are accessed.
3. AthensDA is still used by Universities alongside Shibbleth in order to connect to resources that Athens authenticated only. As a result IT departments are required to implement an interoperability between the two technologies.

Realistically the disadvantages of Shibboleth should be short term. As the product is now widely used as well as open source, there will likely be developments to enable librarians to manipulate data easily. In the long term it is highly likely that the amount of service providers will increase rapidly due to support and pressure from the JISC.

OpenAthens LA 2.0 really interested me as a product. The message throughout was fairly consistent: if you have an LDAP server / Windows environment, the product will run without issue. It requires two parts of the system to be hosted internally, including the main set-up of the system as well as the admin side hosted on a web server so that changes can be made remotely. The admin system did seem fairly complicated to use and therefore may require IT to become much more involved in the early stages of use. Eduserv however were confident that this system will be much more simpler when available for release.

The statistics side is a real treat though, as it allows Librarians to use the comprehensive process they are already used to with classic Athens. The system also caters for Libraries who need to set-up quick accounts so that walk-in users can access electronic resources. With Shibboleth this would involve setting up a temporary entry in the Active Directory, clearly not a solution for many institutions!

Overall I think we should consider this as a viable alternative. Over the coming years many of our electronic providers may choose to provide Shibboleth only authentication, in which case moving over to this framework would be much more important. But if many institutions begin to choose this product over Shibboleth in the short term, why would service providers seek to spend money on Shibboleth?

I would welcome any comments on this as I am an authentication noob, starting out a career in digital resource Librarianship.

Tags: Athens, Authentication, shibboleth

The relationship between Librarians  and information literacy has gone through a significant transition in the last five to ten years. We now deal with a huge amount of information in a very wide range of formats, from Books to eBooks, Journals to Bibliographic databases.

The swift change in the services that we provide for our users means that even academics have been left behind and out of touch with our services. As a result, we are increasingly required (and rightly so) to introduce and re-invent the use of Library services to students and academics. This is no easy task as you would have already experienced; has anyone successfully run a lunch time training session with a full attendance? And how often have you seen that glazed over look from students when presenting technologies that can really benefit their assignments?

In my opinion (and many others agree) students will no longer respond to or remember the information that they are given in traditional research sessions involving a powerpoint and handouts. Increasingly advantage is gained by seeking students (and now staff) in their most likely learning environments, making information available online in support of the personal touch that librarians successfully provide. Librarians are specialists at helping people find information, and it is essential that library users can find the support of a librarian in their hectic every day lives.

In my role as Electronic services librarian I was given the task to update the ways in which we taught information skills to students. At the time the Library had very little integration with Moodle (our VLE), which meant that students were directed through our website for extra support and guidance to our research and induction sessions. This had some drawbacks:

• Students were expected to remember our URL, as well as how to access the site on campus.
• The target information was buried within a site already saturated with content, meaning that students could quickly become confused.
• Our website represented one extra service for students to remember to use at the college, and was not widely supported by lecturers.

As a result we looked at providing our research sessions with the use of our VLE, providing the following advantages:

• Students were already familiar with the VLE, and had an excellent understanding of navigating around its layout.
• Information can be built within a course page meaning that staff and students have little choice but to access the information provided by the Library.
• The password protected environment allows Librarians to provide students with authentication info to electronic resources more securely than through an open domain website.
• Technologies already exist through Moodle that would take some time to set-up through our hard-coded XHTML site. For example discussion forums, file uploads, quizes can all be set-up within minutes and work very well alongside content in Moodle.

Our existing research sessions for students involved providing students with a short introductory talk, supported with a handout including information and activities. As this worked well our decision was to not let Moodle change this approach, but create a Moodle course that hosted activities electronically, as well as give students access to the paper copy in PDF or Doc. format for download.

We often found in our old sessions that students would leave behind or lose their handouts after a research sessions but Moodle solved this issue. Staff were already aware of the content we had added to the site and therefore had prepared the students beforehand. Students were also confronted by the material each time the logged into their course for the rest of the year, and would only lose access if somebody with permission deletes it.

The quiz function proved the most useful. During the activity students were asked questions about the research they had done. The answers students provided were set-up to be emailed directly to the librarian. The librarian was then able to check over the answers briefly after the session, getting a good idea of whether the students had learnt anything.

Using Camstudio (see my previous post) I was able to make tutorial videos of how to use our electronic service to support my presentation. These videos were then embedded into the activity to support students if they weren’t paying attention during the session.

I would love to provide screenshots but I now work elsewhere – look out for a similar post soon on Blackboard and research sessions!

Tags: moodle, research, vle

In the summer I stumbled across Camstudio, an open source program that allows you to record your desktop screen activity. This is an extremely useful product for those of us who are yet to invest in products like Adobe Captivate.

As a Librarian I feel products such as Camstudio will quickly become essential. The Internet has quickly become the only place users visit to find information, and the private nature of this activity means that many make simple mistakes. The creation of online tutorials using Camstudio allows Librarians to meet students online and provide clear visual instruction.

I have used Camstudio as a training tool for the number of online databases that we subscribe to, and have been hosting them on our Library website with additional plans to integrate them with our VLE.

Some basic examples of video tutorials that I have done can be found below. They took me minutes to do and were instantly converted to flash video files upon completion.

http://www.filton.ac.uk/lrc/howtoguides/flashtutorials/gmid.swf.html

http://www.filton.ac.uk/lrc/howtoguides/flashtutorials/sector%20briefing.swf.html

I launched the new LRC website at Filton College today. The whole thing was created using a HTML editor, so it took me long time to do! I am quite happy with it, particuarly the ‘good websites’ section which involved a decent amount thought and discussion.

In the coming months I plan to embed a video tour of the LRC, before trialling some instant messaging software often branded as ‘ask a Librarian’.

I would like to know what you all think, as it will not be officially be launched until the students return at the beginning of September.