Librarian Hacks: Introducing the Virtual Theological Library Project

Acquiring a low-cost library catalog is problematic, but there are a number of tools to ‘hack’ a library catalog. While no free product rivals the usability and searching sophistication of proprietary ILS systems, I believe that the Virtual Theological Library Project presents a solution is that is affordable and easy to implement. Using tools freely available on the web, librarians in churches and small academic libraries can created a cloud-based library catalog that is searchable to the public and supplement their local holdings with millions of theological texts on the web. Using Google Site and Google Sheets to create a catalog combines the accessibility and precision that other DIY cataloging solutions do no

We Want It All (for Free)!

Budgets are tight, no one can afford to buy what you can get free. As educators, we want the best, most innovative tools but we want it all for free! This session is an exporation of Rich Internet Applications (Web 2.0/RIA) tools that are free (or low cost) and enable you to store research notes, store and edit images, set-up social networks and more. Bring your favorite tool to share during the concluding 15 minutes of the session

Look! Up in Cyberspace! Is it Web 2.0? Is it Web 3.0? No! It’s SuperWeb – Technologies for the Classroom!

Using the familiar Bloom‟s Taxonomy pyramid, traditionally applied in educational learning objectives, can be useful in helping to choose the right technology to assist in reaching the desired educational outcomes. Many Web technologies provide free or low-cost teaching tools. Some of the many options available for the computer are provided here along with lesson ideas to incorporate these tools into the learning environment

Sustainable Design of Buildings using Semantic BIM and Semantic Web Services

In response to the growing concerns about climate change and the environment, sustainable design of buildings is increasingly demanded by building owners and users. However, fast evaluation of various design options and identification of the optimized design requires application of design analysis tools such as energy modeling, daylight simulations, and natural ventilation analysis software. Energy analysis requires access to distributed sources of information such as building element material properties provided by designers, mechanical equipment information provided by equipment manufacturers, weather data provided by weather reporting agencies, and energy cost data from energy providers. Gathering energy related information from different sources and inputting the information to an energy analysis application is a time consuming process. This causes delays and increases the time for comparing different design alternatives. This paper discusses how Semantic Web technology can facilitate information collection from several sources for energy analysis. Semantic Web enables sharing, accessing, and combining information over the Internet in a machine process-able format. This would free building designers to concentrate on building design optimization rather than spending time on data preparation and manual entry into energy analysis applications

Teradata University Network: A No Cost Web-Portal for Teaching Database, Data Warehousing, and Data-Related Subjects

This paper describes the value that information systems faculty and students in classes dealing with database management, data warehousing, decision support systems, and related topics, could derive from the use of the Teradata University Network (TUN), a free comprehensive web-portal. A detailed overview of TUN functionalities and content is given. Freely available resources, such as software tools, large corporate data sets, case studies, and exercises are detailed. Various ways in which the TUN resources can facilitate teaching and learning processes are discussed. The zero-installation, zero-maintenance, zero-cost TUN paradigm is explained

ZoomAzores project: implementation of a WebGIS for Nature and Adventure Tourism.

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Estatística e Gestão de InformaçãoNowadays, the Web offers new ways to make available information to users. This creates new ways and tools that can be used to make available tourist information and promotion of these destinations. The main objective this work is to develop a Web application for the ZoomAzores project. This web application uses dynamic maps and user-generated content features, which are focused on make available useful information for the tourist and the promotion of Nature and Adventure Tourism (NAT) in the archipelago of Azores. The solutions encountered were always determined by the technologies used and from the point of view of tourists visiting the Azores, which frequently doesn’t know about the Azores territory. The ZoomAzores Web application has Geographic Information System (GIS) visualization and navigation capabilities on the Internet, turning it into a WebGIS. It also encompasses the principles of Web 2.0 providing functionalities such as the generation of contents by users. The existing link between the use of dynamic maps and Web 2.0 in the tourism promotion and travel planning tasks seems to be a solid reality putting up new opportunities for the business in tourism.In this work, the development of the ZoomAzores WebGIS is based on the use of Open Standards (OS) and Free Open Source Software (FOSS). The use of OS is a key to the development of a WebGIS application able to interoperate with other systems and then use and consume Web Services (WS) that other systems can offer, concurrently enriching the data sources used. The FOSS technologies allow creates a more low cost solution without licensing cost software. This document exposes some design aspects in the system development and describes some functional and architectural features about the WebGIS ZoomAzores

Serverification of Molecular Modeling Applications: the Rosetta Online Server that Includes Everyone (ROSIE)

The Rosetta molecular modeling software package provides experimentally tested and rapidly evolving tools for the 3D structure prediction and high-resolution design of proteins, nucleic acids, and a growing number of non-natural polymers. Despite its free availability to academic users and improving documentation, use of Rosetta has largely remained confined to developers and their immediate collaborators due to the code's difficulty of use, the requirement for large computational resources, and the unavailability of servers for most of the Rosetta applications. Here, we present a unified web framework for Rosetta applications called ROSIE (Rosetta Online Server that Includes Everyone). ROSIE provides (a) a common user interface for Rosetta protocols, (b) a stable application programming interface for developers to add additional protocols, (c) a flexible back-end to allow leveraging of computer cluster resources shared by RosettaCommons member institutions, and (d) centralized administration by the RosettaCommons to ensure continuous maintenance. This paper describes the ROSIE server infrastructure, a step-by-step 'serverification' protocol for use by Rosetta developers, and the deployment of the first nine ROSIE applications by six separate developer teams: Docking, RNA de novo, ERRASER, Antibody, Sequence Tolerance, Supercharge, Beta peptide design, NCBB design, and VIP redesign. As illustrated by the number and diversity of these applications, ROSIE offers a general and speedy paradigm for serverification of Rosetta applications that incurs negligible cost to developers and lowers barriers to Rosetta use for the broader biological community. ROSIE is available at http://rosie.rosettacommons.org

Putting it all Together: A Holistic Approach to Utilizing Your Library\u27s User Data for Making Informed Web Design Decisions

In the age of Big Data, there is an abundance of free or cheap data sources available to libraries about their users\u27 behavior across the many components that make up their web presence. Data from vendors, data from Google Analytics or other third-party tracking software, and data from user testing are all things libraries have access to at little or no cost. However, just like many students can become overloaded when they do not know how to navigate the many information sources available to them, many libraries can become overloaded by the continuous stream of data pouring in from these sources. This session will aim to help librarians understand 1) what sorts of data their library already has (or easily could have) access to about how their users use their various web tools, 2) what that data can and cannot tell them, and 3) how to use the datasets they are collecting in a holistic manner to help them make design decisions. The presentation will feature examples from the presenters\u27 own experience of incorporating user data in decisions related to design the Bethel University Libraries\u27 web presence

The Open Resource Scholarly Network: a new era for historians, archivists and technologists

Since 1985 the staff of the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre (Austehc) have been collecting and disseminating information about the history of Australian science, technology and medicine including data about archival resources on the presumption that scholarly practice, including the creation of new knowledge, was based on free access to, and the citability of, existing knowledge. The advent of electronic network technologies has enable us to realise our goals in ways that were not even dreams in the earlier environment. However, not all players in the scholarly information and publishing realms have responded in the same way. Despite these new technologies, which should be making resources much more readily accessible, many valuable resources are locked up (discoverable perhaps but uncitable) behind closed database walls or are available only on a user pays basis. In many cases these resources were previously available freely through research libraries. Austehc has spent the last few years developing database driven Web publishing tools to support an open resource scholarly electronic network. These tools are being offered to the community at no cost, under the open source philosophy, if they are used for public good and education purposes. These tools, the "Online Heritage Resource Manager" (OHRM) and the "Web Academic Resource Publisher" (WARP) will be presented to this meeting.Hosted by the Scholarly Text and Imaging Service (SETIS), the University of Sydney Library, and the Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (RIHSS), the University of Sydney