The MmIT National Conference 2012 will be held on the 17th April at the University of Sheffield.
Reduced budgets? Increased impact!
Increasing LIS impact with new technologies
Keynote speakers are Ross Mahon, Apps Edu Evangelist, from Google and Marshall Breeding, of the Library Technology Guides (librarytechnology.org).
Workshop sessions include:
There will also be Expert Q&A; 5 minute quick fixes; Interactive voting session and tours of University of Sheffield’s Information Commons.
Conference web site: http://tinyurl.com/5taclmc
Online booking form: http://tinyurl.com/d6qteh7
You can also keep up with the conference on Lanyrd: http://lanyrd.com/2012/mmit2012/.
Cost: £120 (incl VAT) for MMIT members; £156 (incl VAT) for non members. A limited number of reduced price places are available for unwaged and students.
Enquiries: mmit2012@sheffield.ac.uk
There’s been an impressive amount of librarian chatter about Code Year, a new initiative from the people behind Codeacademy. Codeacademy offer free introductory programming tutorials using JavaScript as the language of choice and it looks like this is also the approach Code Year will take. Discussion has already started on Twitter (hashtag #libcodeyear or #catcode) and IRC (#libcodeyear @ Freenode).
JavaScript is often proposed as a starter coding choice, at least in part due to it’s ubiquity (got browser? got JavaScript!). I’m not going to get into a language war, deciding what programming language to start with largely depends on a) what you like and b) what you want to build. And there are plenty of other places you can hear the arguments from every possible angle. It also depends on your own learning style. Don’t get discouraged if one of the tutorials doesn’t work for you, there are plenty others that might fit better with the way you learn. There’s a plethora of courses and learning resources out there, many of which have been listed on the Cat Code wiki.
The best coding tutorials (IMHO) are the ones that help you create something practical and/or applicable to your area of interest. And, with that in mind, I’ve started a list of open source library projects that may be of interest to those getting started with writing code. These projects aren’t necessarily beginner level (many of them aren’t) but provide examples of real code in action and something that you may be able to use and (eventually) contribute to.
Learning JavaScript?
Learning PHP?
Learning Ruby and/or Ruby on Rails?
These are just a few examples which I hope to keep adding to and, of course, suggestions are more than welcome.
MMIT Group has one free pass to give away to a group member. Simply email MmIT journal editor catherine.dhanjal@theansweruk.com by 31 January stating why you’d like to attend. http://edgeconference.co.uk AND journal readers & Group member can also use our special discount code to book a place
The November issue of the Group journal is now available online.
To log in with your normal Cilip website user name and password, visit: http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/multimedia/journal/pages/journalcurrentissue.aspx. If you need a reminder of your Cilip password/user name, contact Cilip or catherine.dhanjal@theansweruk.com
This issue covers news, book and product reviews, tech-round up plus features.
Our special feature focus on ‘open’ includes articles on open source library management systems; open source referencing tool Mendeley; open access institutional repositories; and open linked data for archives and libraries.
Other features cover image processing; confusing council websites; report from Umbrella 2011 conference; a new code for cloud computing; and a preview of EDGE2012 conference in Edinburgh (plus discount code and the chance to win a free place!).
For an upcoming issue we are planning a retrospective/futuristic theme, looking at how technology developments in libraries, education and the arts have evolved over the last decades. If you feel inspired to write an article for us on this theme, please contact the editor, catherine.dhanjal@theansweruk.com.
