The Higüera of Puerto Rico is called "Totumo" in Other Countries

So I've been doing a personal search of info on how to craft with the higüera, a fruit that looks and behaves kinda like a gourd that grows on trees in Puerto Rico. But all searches for "higüera" online kept bringing me to higuera, which is a fig. (Note the little snake bite above the "u" in higuera.) After some creative word combinations I found a video that referred to the higüera as a totumo in Colombia, and the rest is arts and crafts online searching history. A whole door opened up to videos and images of people making things with the higüera and their final creative projects.

The first step was to find out how to prep the fruit for crafting. Because it is not technically a gourd, I couldn't follow all the amazing tips by all the gourd crafters out there. In PR, you cut the higüera in half (or in whatever shape you want), scoop out the guts and set it out to dry. But then it ends up drying really dark brown and I've seen samples with a cream base.

I found one video that followed an artisan through the steps of prepping the totumo and she said that you have to boil it.

But the video continues without an explanation of how long to boil it. I went back to Google and this time typed in "hervir totumo" and found a great Prezi, which I've embedded below for your viewing and instructional pleasure. Spending time on youtube, I've found loads of different ways to prep the higüera. I've also found out that it's also called "jicaro" in Mexico.

Making Maps

A friend of mine owns a water sports business in the Caribbean and I wanted to help her out with creating some maps to show the location of one of her excursions and to display the coral reefs surrounding the island. (Actually, now that I think about it, it would be great to create an interactive map where you can see corals, sea grass beds, limestone cliffs, mangrove ecosystems and so on and so forth with the various coastal and marine habitats of interest. A data manipulation skill to learn for the future.)

So in pursuit of creating the map, I looked up GIS software and of course the daddy of it all is the US Geological Survey's The National Map page for downloading pre-existing maps and The National Map Viewer for creating custom maps. I'll admit, after taking up 15 of the 30 minutes max I wanted to spend on this little project just exploring the features and lingo of these tools, I decided that the USGS NM and NMV were more high tech and less user friendly than I wanted. So I went looking for an easier user interface (note, I didn't say better)...

And I found the National Geographic MapMaker Interactive tool which allowed me to do everything I wanted, like draw on the map, zoom in, choose a satellite version (vs. topographic or street map) of the island, everything I was looking for initially... except download an image ( you could download a pdf, which I suppose could be converted to an image, etc, etc. but I wanted it now! Thank you, MS Windows, for the PrtSc function but then I needed to crop out the window, so my "workaround" still involved work.)

Here's the route my friends take for one of their snorkeling trips:

After I created that map, I then got all excited to see where all the coral reefs are located around Vieques Island and found the excellent tool ReefGIS by ReefBase, which is a database used by several international coral monitoring networks with funding by the United Nations Foundation. Below is a map displaying corals by their depth.

Light purple is shallow reefs, mid purple is mixed shallow/deep reefs, and dark purple is deep reef. Unfortunately, the actual depths were not included in the map, but from my snorkeling experience, I can say the mixed depth reef ranged from 8 - 20 feet deep. After checking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coral Reef Conservation Program page, I learned that corals may grow to depths of over 200 ft and that shallow reefs may be considered up to 90 feet in depth. Wow! But then that makes me want to question the map's data and what ranges were set. Oh, well, at least it identifies location of corals around Vieques. Enjoy.

The Digital Shift 2014 Online Conference, Twitter Tag #TDS14

This online conference was well organized and technologically easy to navigate with a graphically pleasing interface. I'm glad I was able to log in and participate for a one of the sessions and a few of the poster presentations. I just wanted to make a quick note about:

StatBase, an open source data management software built on Joomla and created by an in house team of librarians and IT/ digital management librarians at the New Port News Public Library. They have basic documentation and information at their sourceforge page and at their libguide page. The presentation reminded me of Counting Opinion's LibPass and LibStat browser based distribute-able software for data collection and statistics presentation. I'd love to see what some of the forms pages look like and what the presentation of the data looks like. I guess I'd have to download a copy and mount it to play around.

I missed the first speaker for the Content Containers and Beyond Session at 12:15pm EST, but wow! the sessions were archived almost immediately and so I was able to review the excellent presentation on the Digital Public Library of America. Emily Gore talked about the Ps of the DPLA which were portal, platform, and partnerships.

• things a good portal can do with an aggregated collection of over 8 million items- create online exhibitions using items from different contributed collections (making use of linked data to form links of unique items that may be spread across the states), use GPS metadata to "place" items on a map for geographic discovery (this is good for people looking at local history) and make use of time/date metadata to "place" items on a timeline (perhaps best when looking a thematically linked items to see their appearance in history and if and how the when of them relates to the when of other items).
• by providing an API (application programming interface), the DPLA is a platform for other imaginings of how to use the data, or how to make the data relevant to your local area/ collection/ needs
• the DPLA relies on two types of partnerships - content hubs and service hubs, each which contribute digital items and their associated metadata, without which the DPLA would be a seriously unfun place to visit. They also have community advocates in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) "industry" to speak on the DPLA's behalf, like at conventions, local outreach events, etc. Types of partners include (and I list these for when thinking about writing a grant to look at the local level for these types of partners):
• libraries
• gov't agencies ( municipal?)
• museums
• non-profits (cultural centers, look at those that share your mission area?)
• universities
• encyclopedias (currently I'm in PR, so the Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico supported by the Puerto Rican Foundation for the Humanities is an example.)
• high schools and local universities with departments or student organizations in your area of interest
• historical societies
• international partners (continuing the PR example, el Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College, the City University of New York)
• Upcoming- standardization of vocabulary to describe rights statements from free text to perhaps checkbox able descriptions to allow filters to be applied to digital objects so that users could focus in on items in the public domain, or which allow reuse. a Knight News Challenge (grant?)

And finally, there was mention of Linked Open Data Library Archives Museums #LODLAM from Jon Voss of History Pin (funded by WeAreWhatWeDo) which would allow mashups of digital objects such as overlays of images on maps and overlays of information on images. 

Here's a list of links for me to do further study:

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web?language=en
http://entopix.com/so-you-need-to-understand-language-data-open-source-nlp-software-can-help/
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/lod/index.html
http://challenge.semanticweb.org/2014/submissions/
http://code4lib.org/

Geocaches in Libraries and creating a Letterbox Maker Space program

I was doing some reading about geocaching, and found that there are some libraries that have allowed cachers to place a cache within the stacks (best place is probably the reference stacks). Laura Goodwin describes her experience (in the comments section of the post) of finding a cache at a library, where the coordinates for the cache took her to the front door of her library and then she figured out the name of the cache, given in Dewey decimal "code," would reveal the actual location of the cached item.

Geocachers searching for the cache hunt through the stacks then sign the log once they find the book, which could be hollowed out to contain additional items. I see a letterbox hybrid (scroll down on the linked page for the description) as being especially cool and could even be part of a maker space (individual) program where participants make a stamp to add to the letterbox log. (Letterboxing is itself an activity that is similar to geocaching, but rather than use GPS technology to mark the location of the letterbox, orienteering skills as well as problem solving of hints and clues are required.) The book wouldn't even have to be cataloged! 

A Maker Space Letterbox Activity could be:

• find the letterbox cache, 
• "check out" the book which would really involve getting the maker space tools
•  carve the stamp, then ink and add your personalized stamp to the letterbox's logbook
• return the tools and letterbox cache/book to the library
• go home with your new stamp and perhaps take up letterboxing

Issues with this activity

• carving tools are sharp and could cut the person if they don't use them correctly
• ongoing cost of the stamp material for carving
• messiness of the inks (which is why it would all be contained in the makerspace!)

Here's an awesome letterbox found in a pill bottle. A healthcare blog posted it as a thematically related activity they suggest for nurses!

FreeSpirited1 has created a list of geocaches located in libraries on geocaching.com. (You don't have to be a member of the site to see the list, but in order to see the full descriptions of each cache, you'll need a free membership.)