Blogging and Tenure from Prof. Hacker
One of my favorite new blogs to read is Prof. Hacker. They take such a no nonsense approach to technology and productivity in higher education.
Most recently, they wrote a post about blogging and tenure: specifically talking about your blogging efforts in your tenure notebook. The author of the post included the paragraph he included in his notebook about his blog and said this:
I want to highlight that I did not present my blog as a piece of scholarship. I considered it to be a part of my professional development, meaning it played a vital role in the creation of my scholarship even though it was not scholarship itself.
However, I have seen a number of blogs written by professors (even some here at Baylor) which I would definitely include in the “piece of scholarship” column. The author of the post asks those in the comments to state the ways they wrote or talked about their blog when they went up for tenure, and many of the commenters mention that they do consider their blogs to be serious scholarship.
Perhaps in another post here at InfoSandbox, I will list some of the great blogs I have found that Baylor professors write.
PubMed-EX
I just learned about PubMed-EX, a new Firefox Addon which performs text-mining on any record in PubMed and provides additional background information on key terms in little pop-up boxes. A great feature if you regularly search PubMed.
I’ve already added it to the research guide I created on Library and Research widgets.
Using Tech Workshop Resources
Firefox & Add-ons
Browsers
- Firefox
- Portable Firefox (for a flash drive)
Add-ons
- Adblock Plus: Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.
- Morning Coffee: Keeps track of daily routine websites and opens them in tabs…
- Coral IE Tab: An enhanced version of IE Tab which enables you to use the embedded IE engine within tabs of Mozilla Firefox. It supports Adblock Plus in IE, and can sync cookies between IE and Firefox.
- LeechBlock: LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.
- TimeTracker: Do you spend too much time on Firefox? Do you open tabs faster than you can close them? Cannot get things done? Keep track of how much you browse with TimeTracker.
- Read it Later: This Firefox extension allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest.
- Dictionary ToolTip: Press ctrl+shift+K (or) double-click to see its meaning. This extension is ideal for those who doesn’t like to switch their window to see the meaning of a word.
- WeatherBug: Get live, local weather conditions in Firefox with the WeatherBug extension. Featuring forecasts, radar, and severe weather alerts from WeatherBug’s community of neighborhood weather.
- More Addons
- Add search engines for scholarly publishers/databases to your Firefox search toolbar
- Some other addons that other workshoppers have mentioned:
- Session Manager: Session Manager saves and restores the state of all windows – either when you want it or automatically at startup and after crashes. Additionally it offers you to reopen (accidentally) closed windows and tabs.
- Xmarks: Xmarks is the #1 bookmarking add-on. Install it on all your computers to keep your bookmarks and (optionally) passwords backed up and synchronized. Xmarks also helps you uncover the best of the web based on what millions of people are bookmarking.
RSS
RSS Readers/Aggregators
- Browser-based:
- Desktop client:
- FeedDemon
- FeedReader
- NetNewsWire (for Mac & iPhone)
- Outlook 2007 now supports RSS feeds
- Live bookmarks:
Some good places to find feeds:
- ticTOCs Journal Table of Contents Services – find RSS feeds for scholarly journal tables of contents and stay up to date with your professional literature.
- AcademicBlogs
- Baylor Library New Materials RSS Feeds
- Grab an RSS feed of any Flickr tag
- Send a Google Search Alert to an RSS feed
Other Uses for RSS
RSS is not limited to delivering the news. Any sort of data that can be broken down and organized with a list can be gotten via RSS. Examples:
- Airline delays
- Real Estate listings – many real estate companies or MLS listing sites provide RSS feeds for customized searches.
- UPS Tracking
- Sports scores
- Weather updates
Organization
To-Do Lists
Note-taking/Capture
Collaboration
Other
Research
Libraries. Technology. Teaching. Learning.
As Assistant Director for Liaison Services, I lead, coordinate and organize the training for the team of public services staff; administrate the online tools (LibraryH3lp, LibGuides, LibAnalytics, LibCal, LibAnswers, etc.) used by the department; coordinate departmental statistics; and assist in managing the daily operations of the department. I am also the liaison librarian to several academic departments.
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