I think there is an amazing variety of these tools available free on the internet, even if they don't have all the features of the versions you subscribe to. I had no idea there were so many free online tools out there. I couldn't access the Thumbstacks site but had no trouble with the others in this week's lesson.
Picnik - online photo editing in your browser at www.picnik.com - could be useful if you carry photos around on USBs and have them emailed to you. I sometimes do this as I don't have a computer with graphics software. Or if your library doesn't have graphics software but you want to edit photos of an event or exhibition to put on a blog or website. Text documents like Google Docs and Writeboard would be useful too if you don't subscribe to MS Office, especially as you can roll back to any version and share a particular version instead of emailing attachments (and creating new copies). I like the idea of Yousendit where you can email a very large file without freezing email or taking down a network. You don't need to register for this. Yousendit holds the file for 30 days and emails the recipient. This could be useful for emailing Youtube videos or podcasts in a library situation (provided work firewalls didn't interfere too much).
With Zamzar you can save and convert YouTube videos. If you wanted to save a frame from one as a still picture and post it this could be useful. I also liked the presentation by Janie Hermann and her co-author, about 15 freebies in 50 minutes, hosted by www.slideshare.net. Slideshare lets you post your slides and share them with others, thus creating online presentations or webinars.
Even Jott could be useful, it lets you leave a voice message and have it transcribed and texted. I'm not sure how user friendly the interface is though -- perhaps you have to spell half the words.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Mashups
I am curious to see how my star poster mashup will look when published.
I looked at London: a life in Google images. It is arranged geographically and historically. You can click on different periods and see the "map pins" corresponding to each, and by clicking on a map pin can see an image depicting that period. For example, the pre-18th century heading had a link to a 16th century map. The three different views - satellite, map and hybrid (with place names) make it easy to see where a particular link is on the map now. I think this is a very effective use of a mashup.
The US Library Finder mapping tool makes it easy to see where libraries are. You can search by place name as well as postcode - I would have trouble with postcodes as I don't know them. A link to a similar mapping tool could be useful on a public library website in Australia, especially if the library has branches. (My library is on a network with 4 other council libraries, some of which have branches -- users could find this useful.) Perhaps the "homepage" of the mapping tool could default to the library whose website the user is looking at, if it was like the US one and you could search for any library in Australia on it. (This might cost money to set up -- a project for the National or State libraries, perhaps?)
Voicethreads could be a useful tool for a local history collection. Staff or clients could add their recollections of a place or digital object.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Podcasting
I'm enjoying this week's lesson. What follows is my rambling, if enthusiastic notes on it. Podcasting seems simple in theory. A podcast is a non-music audio or video recording distributed over the internet. P O D = Personal on Demand. You can download it from a website onto an MP3 player or iPOD. To listen all you need is a PC with headphones or speakers. This week's video said you can subscribe and download automatically when new content is added, unlike with streaming. The Apple iPOD was the player for which the first podcasting scripts where developed, and podcasting is a "backronym" from iPOD. Other new terms I learned were vodcast = video podcast; and iTunes (a free tool for podcasting).
I listened to 2 British Library podcasts. One was a discussion of new CDS of British and American writers. The podcast featured soundclips of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf (her only known published recording from 1938). It was fascinating to hear their voices. Fitzgerald read a Shakespeare speech with a recognisable American accent, but spoke more slowly than I am used to hearing American actors speak.
I also listened to a podcast tour of a British Library exhibition "Taking liberties" which touched on suffragettes, the Magna Carta, the history of Parliament and much more.
Then I did a subject search of the ABC's podcasting website. I chose "Arts and entertainment", then an Australian Music podcast site. When I clicked on a title it took me to the announcer Margaret Throsby's website. Then I went back and clicked a link at the bottom of the entry and found a list of music podcasts. (I chose one of the Song Company with a spoken introduction.) Entry to these was more roundabout and not as slick as on the British Library site, but I expect there would be many more podcasts here as the ABC is a broadcaster. I wonder if the British Library archive theirs.
On the Library Success Wiki, Cheshire Public Library and Orange County Library Service had podcasts for teens. Orange County Library Service site had an ad for a 'teen talent show'. There was also a Manga videogame party ad with teen girls conversing - I thought these were a good way of getting this age group's attention. There seemed to be duplicate links to podcasts which corresponded to different download formats like MP3 and WMA.
I think there would be a wealth of applications for podcasting in libraries. One for clients would be author talks; my library has about eight of these per month. Staff could either record the whole speech; or a brief introduction advertising the author, subject and date of the talk (as Orange County Library did for Mark McEwen). Children's Services and Local History could use podcasting for storytimes, exhibition introductions, and oral history for clients. Staff could record important staff meetings for staff that couldn't be there.
P.S. I thought I might have to blog about this subject in 2 different posts, but the blog gremlins sorted themselves out. When I first wrote my blog entry for Week 8 on Answerboards, I saved it as a draft before trying to publish it. I tried twice to publish it but it would not appear as a published post even though the message appeared "Your post published successfully". When I tried to view it it only showed Week 7 and earlier. I could view and edit my Week 8 draft though. This was frustrating - until I published my week 8 post and the week 7 one appeared under it.
They now appear on my blog! :-)
I listened to 2 British Library podcasts. One was a discussion of new CDS of British and American writers. The podcast featured soundclips of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf (her only known published recording from 1938). It was fascinating to hear their voices. Fitzgerald read a Shakespeare speech with a recognisable American accent, but spoke more slowly than I am used to hearing American actors speak.
I also listened to a podcast tour of a British Library exhibition "Taking liberties" which touched on suffragettes, the Magna Carta, the history of Parliament and much more.
Then I did a subject search of the ABC's podcasting website. I chose "Arts and entertainment", then an Australian Music podcast site. When I clicked on a title it took me to the announcer Margaret Throsby's website. Then I went back and clicked a link at the bottom of the entry and found a list of music podcasts. (I chose one of the Song Company with a spoken introduction.) Entry to these was more roundabout and not as slick as on the British Library site, but I expect there would be many more podcasts here as the ABC is a broadcaster. I wonder if the British Library archive theirs.
On the Library Success Wiki, Cheshire Public Library and Orange County Library Service had podcasts for teens. Orange County Library Service site had an ad for a 'teen talent show'. There was also a Manga videogame party ad with teen girls conversing - I thought these were a good way of getting this age group's attention. There seemed to be duplicate links to podcasts which corresponded to different download formats like MP3 and WMA.
I think there would be a wealth of applications for podcasting in libraries. One for clients would be author talks; my library has about eight of these per month. Staff could either record the whole speech; or a brief introduction advertising the author, subject and date of the talk (as Orange County Library did for Mark McEwen). Children's Services and Local History could use podcasting for storytimes, exhibition introductions, and oral history for clients. Staff could record important staff meetings for staff that couldn't be there.
P.S. I thought I might have to blog about this subject in 2 different posts, but the blog gremlins sorted themselves out. When I first wrote my blog entry for Week 8 on Answerboards, I saved it as a draft before trying to publish it. I tried twice to publish it but it would not appear as a published post even though the message appeared "Your post published successfully". When I tried to view it it only showed Week 7 and earlier. I could view and edit my Week 8 draft though. This was frustrating - until I published my week 8 post and the week 7 one appeared under it.
They now appear on my blog! :-)
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Answer boards and social searching
On http://answerboards.wetpaint.com it is suggested that reference librarians "slam the boards" once a month. This seems to be a U.S. site and there seems to be a movement of librarians internationally who aim to do this. Many of the questions on WikiAnswers are vague and sometimes ungrammatical.
For one question in the "Exemplary answers" section of the "Answer Board Librarians Wiki", the best answer as chosen by voters was superficial. A librarian's answer, on the other hand, was thorough and helpful - it answered the question (how to get whiteout off a shirt) while the "chosen answer" sounded like an attempt to be smart (buy a new shirt). I'm not sure whether readers/askers always read the longer answers though. I think it may be easier to give face-to-face reference services where you can clarify what the asker means, than to try and understand a very vague question and answer it on an answer board.
Regarding a role for my library in slamming the boards: I think it is easier to justify answering reference enquiries if the enquirer is local or if the service can be directly linked to your source of funding. For example, in a public library, answering local history enquiries is clearly a service that comes under the banner of a local council. The same applies to collecting local history materials: they are less likely to be weeded than other library materials. Slamming the boards may be a good way librarians can promote their services. I wonder though, who is going to fund the librarians' time doing this? Will they work on the answers in their own time? Employers may not think it is a good use of staff time to answer questions from enquirers in another suburb or another country.
I think using taglines like "Libraries - because you NEED to KNOW" at the end of an answer boards answer, is a good way of promoting library services, especially as it appears that librarians' answers are often rated highly by answerboard users.
Customers of my library might like to add their reviews of our books or DVDs, if there was some link on the catalogue record that enabled them to do this. They also sometimes make suggestions for improvement of the service. A blog on the library website might enable them to do this online. The Council has a blog where they raise a topic periodically (e.g. parking, social isolation) and customers can add their comments about it.
For one question in the "Exemplary answers" section of the "Answer Board Librarians Wiki", the best answer as chosen by voters was superficial. A librarian's answer, on the other hand, was thorough and helpful - it answered the question (how to get whiteout off a shirt) while the "chosen answer" sounded like an attempt to be smart (buy a new shirt). I'm not sure whether readers/askers always read the longer answers though. I think it may be easier to give face-to-face reference services where you can clarify what the asker means, than to try and understand a very vague question and answer it on an answer board.
Regarding a role for my library in slamming the boards: I think it is easier to justify answering reference enquiries if the enquirer is local or if the service can be directly linked to your source of funding. For example, in a public library, answering local history enquiries is clearly a service that comes under the banner of a local council. The same applies to collecting local history materials: they are less likely to be weeded than other library materials. Slamming the boards may be a good way librarians can promote their services. I wonder though, who is going to fund the librarians' time doing this? Will they work on the answers in their own time? Employers may not think it is a good use of staff time to answer questions from enquirers in another suburb or another country.
I think using taglines like "Libraries - because you NEED to KNOW" at the end of an answer boards answer, is a good way of promoting library services, especially as it appears that librarians' answers are often rated highly by answerboard users.
Customers of my library might like to add their reviews of our books or DVDs, if there was some link on the catalogue record that enabled them to do this. They also sometimes make suggestions for improvement of the service. A blog on the library website might enable them to do this online. The Council has a blog where they raise a topic periodically (e.g. parking, social isolation) and customers can add their comments about it.
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