• Peter: Rich text/Dynamic Content/scripts, RSS feeds
  • Angie: Embedding video and interactive polls, user link submission
  • Remlee: Remote script box, pod cast, web links (http://libguides.mit.edu/remlee)
  • Maggie: Date and Events, Documents & Files
  • Georgiana: Tag Cloud, Books from the catalog

Remote script box:

  • "Run a remote script and display the results inside this box. Anything your script writes to stdout (standard out) will be displayed inside the box. Run at your own risk!"
  • Can't really try it without having some code to enter...  I know that Nicole will play with it some more...
  • For more info, see: http://support.springshare.com/2008/05/remote-script-libguides-content-box/

Podcast feed box:

  • "Podcast box type enables you to display the contents of a podcast feed on your page. Note that this doesn't download the actual audio of the podcast - it just provides the link to it"
  • Asks you to enter a URL; used http://feeds.rapidfeeds.com/6772 for Ellen's podcasts.  You get to choose how many show
  • Some of the characters don't display correctly
  • Hovering over the link shows the full description
  • You can subscribe to the feed from the box, or go to the website (in this case, it goes to Ellen's pages.)  You can't tell it which links to use.

Web Links: 

  • "Simple web links can have short description which appears when the user hovers over the link, and you can track the usage statistics (outgoing clicks) for these links."
  •  We should use get URLs when we can...  You have the option to "prepend proxy URL"; handy for people coming from off campus, since we can set it to use "libproxy.mit.edu"
  • Doesn't give you the option to rate resources. 
  • More info (if you add it) pops up when you hover over link.
  • Can add intro to box with rich text editor.
  • (An aside:  I added an anchor in rich text editor to the page, and it works!  http://libguides.mit.edu/content.php?mode=preview&pid=9157&sid=59577#anchor)

Date & Events:

  • The ability to post events is nice, but this function wouldn't really work as a registration tool.  There is an option to link to a URL which presumbly would have more information about the event and email links or links to a form.  If we had a registration software in place then it would be fun to see how the libguides event feature would work with that.  Not sure I'd use it without some way to give people a  timesaving link for registration though. 
  • See my examples on the home page of Companies Draft at http://libguides.mit.edu/companies1

Documents & Files:

  • This is really neat.  You can easily upload pdfs (I didn't try any other file types).  A nice way to make cheatsheets easily available, reasonably near point of need. See my examples on the home page of Companies Draft.
  • Just thinking:  if one were to take advantage of several of these box options, it would mean a real commitment to keeping all these things current and updated.

Del.icio.us Tag cloud:

  • You must have a Del.icio.us account and tagged items in that account.
  • The box allows you to add ALL of your tags. You have the option to have the tags listed alphabetically or by frequency. You also have the option to add counts to the tags. The tags are links to your Del.icio.us page.
  • A link to your Del.iciou.us page is also added to the box.
  • This might be useful if we switch the Virtual Reference Page to LibGuides.
  • I have an example on the Humanities (General) guide...Virtual Reference tab.

Books from the Catalog:

  • The main advantage of this box is the ability to add cover art.
  • Find cover art from other sites if Amazon link doesn't work or if art is not available on Amazon. Right click on image from another site and find the properties of the image to obtain the url for the image. Copy the image url and paste in cover art box.
  • It's not necessary to input call number, author, etc. Probably best not to do so...less clutter? It would be better to add a description which would be more helpful to users. Description appears below title.
  • Use the url for the Barton record so that user is brought directly to the catalog record in order to obtain call number and other information.
  • See examples on Humanities (General) guide...Quotations tab.

Rich Text Dynamic Contents Scripts:

  •  What does this mean in the help. "You can imbed custom scripts i frame etc. then says you can do this in all box types.
  • Very easy to cut and paste from a web page. Formatting usuall works pretty well, at least with basic lists. It does give you a text editor for inserting images, etc. Would be good for people who wanted to put in their own code.
  • Tried cutting and pasting another table from Remlee's bibliographic software page but was too big. Would probably work with 2 box format. Or is there a way to size tables?
  •  

Interactive Polls: 

  • "Interactive Poll enables you to create a poll on your page. Create a question and enter up to 6 choices for your poll. Each poll choice can have assoicated url"
  • Able to add links in the poll responses.  Only 7 choices available for the poll. 
  • Questions for the poll are asked in the free text section.
  • There was no way to control how the links open in the poll.  For Firefox, they opened in a new tab.
  • There can only be one vote per computer, I think.  The message is "It appears you have already voted in this poll, so this vote did not count!".  I'm not sure if this is time sensitive, but I think it is.  I was able to vote for another poll multiple times if I just did it once a day.

User Link Submission:

  • "Want to enable your visitors to submit their favorite links on a given topic or a subject? We got you covered - use this box type!"
  • User sees a "submit a link"  link.  This opens a box for the user to suggest something.
  • Nothing much to it.  Just adding links. 
  • Editor can remove links in edit mode.
  • I was emailed when links were added, so the editor knows when links are added and can delete them if they aren't appropriate.

Embedded Video:

  • "Video box enables you to embed a streaming video inside your page. The video can reside on any video sharing sites (YouTube and the like...). You neeed to enter the full <embed>... code to embed it inside the content box"
  • Need the whole embed code for this.  In TechTV,  click the Share button below the video.  Then click Copy and Paste to see the code.
  • Additional code may be needed to run the video.  I just tried and got a box asking how I want to open a file (using what program).
  •  TechTime lets you choose what to run the video in.  look under Advanced Options.  We'll have to play with this to see what works best in LibGuides.
  • Not sure what to do with non-TechTV.  Will need to play more.
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