Tuesday, 1 March 2016

Trove Teetulpa exhibition

Building with Trove

The importance of Trove as a community resource vital to Australia cannot be over emphasised. The development of this valuable resource by The National Library has made historically important information in a wide variety of formats available to all. The Trove API facilitates the development of  innovative programs. One such adaptation is the code for developing an exhibition of Trove materials.

My great grandparents were married at Teetulpa in northern South Australia  in 1887. While investigating what life on the goldfields may have been like for them in the 1880s, I unearthed many interesting reports, books and images in Trove and compiled my findings into four separate lists.

Recently Tim Sherratt shared code to make a D-I-Y exhibition from Trove lists. This is an ideal way to display content in a range of lists from Trove, particularly those lists with visual elements. This was my first venture onto github.com and although I have limited coding experience Tim’s excellent instructions were simple enough for this retiree to follow. His original version of an exhibition is Forecasters: An assortment of weather prophets. He has written more about the process here.

Here’s my Teetulpa Goldfields exhibition.


These interesting exhibitions have been created using Tim's code. I’m sure there are plenty of others out there as yet unseen by me.
Thanks Tim for sharing the code and providing the inspiration. Now is the time for the government to #fundTrove and provide for its ongoing and future development in order to ensure the viability of this resource-rich national treasure.

Saturday, 13 February 2016

Post in haste, repent with no pleasure

Catch the errorsbefore postingWherever and whenever I write, I try to correct for errors before pressing send, enter or post. Sometimes an email slips away with mistakes, a blog post has glaring errors or a message on Facebook fails to make sense. Enter my newest friend Grammarly.

We’ve all seen those mistakes where apostrophes are used when a plural s is sufficient. The lack of commas in writing can lead to some significant misunderstandings. Grammarly checks and highlights these omissions.

imageInstall the Chrome extension and sign in to a free account. Click on the small green G in the toolbar. This will activate the extension which will now be displayed at the bottom of the screen and Grammarly will begins its work. A new window opens with suggested corrections displayed.

No more indecision about what’s correct. Those its and it’s should no longer cause angst. The free version of Grammarly checks the spelling in context, grammar, and punctuation. It also analyzes sentence structure and style. Other advanced features are available through the paid subscription service. I’ve found the free version works for me.

The suggestions provided can be accepted or ignored. The sample below shows where I had omitted an apostrophe. To correct, click on the green highlighted word.


imageGrammarly found four errors in this post before I published. Why not give it a try? It may save an embarrassing moment.




Tuesday, 2 February 2016

Everyday symbols for tech savvy seniors

Carmel and Rick, trainers for Tech Savvy Seniors

Launch of Tech Savvy Seniors Program

As more seniors experience their first encounter with tablets and smartphones Telstra and State Library Queensland have partnered to fund the Tech Savvy Seniors program which was launched at Noosaville Library this morning. Several library staff members along with two community members, will be presenting these sessions during 2016.  The sessions will cover email, social media, online banking, computers, cyber safety, phones, tablets and more. Bookings can be made through local participating libraries.

Tech help Tuesday

This afternoon at Tech help Tuesday I reviewed with the group the meaning of a variety of symbols. Thanks to icons8 where there are more than 19,500 free icons, it was simple to put together these explanatory slides. Have I omitted any that would be crucial for a beginner?




This post first appeared on http://librarycurrants.blogspot.com/2016/02/everyday-symbols-for-tech-savvy-seniors.html

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