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Visions gets a mention in the latest issue of University Business magazine. UB columnist Karine Joly (who also blogs at CollegeWebEditor.com) writes in her latest column, PR on the Web 101, that blogs like this one can be important components of a university's public relations strategy.

Joly also quotes Angie Weidinger, a TV reporter at KOLR-10 in Springfield, Mo., who refers to Visions as a source for information. "I generally check several universities' websites and blogs if they have them," Weidinger says. "UMR's research blog is very helpful because it often has stories on it that highlight some of the students' or professors' unusual research projects. It's a great place to go for story ideas."

"Media reporters," Joly writes, "not only visit institutional websites, but they also read the available blogs or RSS feeds."

For those of you interested in the latest developments on UMR's name change discussion, we offer you the name change conversations blog. It's a blog designed to offer the big UMR community -- not just students, faculty, staff and alumni, but the wide-open frontier of blogworld -- a chance to discuss the issues surrounding the name change. It's also the source for all the latest information about the name change discussion. So drop by, add it to your RSS feed, and become part of the conversation.

On Monday, Visions' very own Mindy Limback hits the lecture circuit, along with two of her compadres from UMR's electronic marketing communications staff (techno-whiz Mark Remer and our resident usability expert, Kevin Tharp). The three will talk about this blog -- and make a case for other colleges and universities to follow our example -- at the District VI meeting of CASE (the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) in Kansas City, Mo. Many lucrative speaking opportunities will no doubt follow.

(Cartoon courtesy of gapingvoid, under these terms.)

A better way to keep track of our books, CDs, DVDs and video games, that is.

GuruLib.com is the brainchild of Rana Basheer, a UMR graduate (2003 MS in computer engineering) who recently returned to get his Ph.D. and conduct research in wireless networking. This website allows users to organize their personal libraries by retrieving information about their books, CDs, DVDs, video games or software from some 530 public and university libraries around the world as well as six Amazon.com servers. All you have to do is type in the name of your book, CD, DVD, etc. -- or use a UPC scanner if you have one handy -- and voila!, the Internet fetches all the info you need to know about it, including ISBN, used and new pricing information, author/performer, copyright information, etc. I spent the icy weekend cataloging my music and book libraries for insurance purposes. GuruLib has now become my latest online obsession.

Read more about how GuruLib.com works on our research news site.