OpenOffice.org Portable

OpenOffice.org Portable
OpenOffice.org Portable is an open source, full-featured office suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database. It is compatible with Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, Lotus and other office applications.

It can work on any portable device, so you can take all your documents and everything you need to work with them on the go.

Technorati Tags: OpenOffice, Portable Software

Useful websites and resources for librarians

• Del.icio.us - A popular social bookmarking site
• Flickr mashups and 3rd party sites
• Wikis
  Google Sites
  PBWiki
• YouTube - Online video
• Web-based Apps
  Google Docs
  Zoho Work Online
• Stay attuned with dozens of blogs and news
  Google Reader
  Bloglines
• Technorati - The leading search tool and authority for blogs in the blogosphere
• Web 2.0 Awards Winners - Web 2.0 tools
• Librarian's Internet Index
• College at home
• MyTutorials - Allows users to search for tutorials in a wide variety of topics
• BBC Languages
• Chinese Tutorials: Learn Mandarin with videos and documents
• Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies: find out top tools for learning

Technorati Tags: Websites and Resources

Template for reference desk schedules

Librarians' and reference desk schedules usually are arranged every week. It would be a good idea to let schedules update themselves with correct dates. Anytime schedules are opened, the date span will be updated automatically to the next week (from next Sunday to next Saturday).

Here I found two ways to work this out. One solution is to use Word Macros, and another one is to use Word Fields. The only drawback about documents with Macros is that you might get security warning. As to documents with Fields, after opening, you need to do: 1. Select all texts using CTRL+A; 2. Then press F9.

Please see the screenshot for the schedule.


Technorati Tags: Reference Desk Schedules, Reference Services, Templates

RefStat - a tool for reference services

About RefStat
RefStat is aimed to prepare reference reports by collecting and analyzing routine reference services.

How to collect reference transactions
When recording a transaction, all you need to do is to specify a subject to which the reference transaction belongs. Since this application uses the "real time" (System time) as the time for reference transactions, you do not need to care about the time when a reference transaction happens.

How to deal with unusual situations
When you input the record into this application, if the current time is substantially different from the time the reference transaction actually happened, you can change the time by yourself. Reference transactions can also be modified or deleted as needed.

Slideshows for RefStat

An animated introduction to RefStat
The following tutorial takes 1 minute and 30 seconds to view.
Introduction to RefStat

Technorati Tags: Database Applications, Reference Services, Reference Statistics, Tutorials