Update: Embedding did something odd, so I’m just linking for now.
I’ve never attempted embedding a Youtube video into my posts, so I’m trying that out in this post. And – this video is funny! It looks like it was made by some high school students – all about a crazy librarian who kills students that break the rules.
Thought someone else might enjoy it, too!
Just an FYI – the Education Institute in Canada has their January – April 2007 course calendar online. They always offer a nice variety of library-related courses, teleconferences, and webcasts. Take a peek below at January’s calendar – lots of good stuff there (and yes, I’m teaching one of the classes)!
One more FYI – Cheryl Stenstrom’s two online courses were recently added. Go read about them and register if interested. I’m told that Cheryl has lots of experience teaching online and is a great instructor, so they’d be good classes to check out.
I am playing with CamStudio, and needed to create a short screencast, so…
At the same time, I was looking at Sirsi/Dynix Horizon sites, and found something slightly amusing (to me, anyway) and thought I’d share.
Click the image to the right to watch the video (here’s the .mov version too, if the m4v version doesn’t work for you).
Does anyone else find this amusing? Disconcerting? Can’t we work on making those “nothing found” messages in our ILS/OPAC/Library Catalog systems a bit better? Hmm?
I certainly HOPE so!
And in other news… CamStudio works great! It’s very easy to use. The only thing I had to change right off the bat was to change the audio recording format from an mp3 file to a PCM file (whatever that is). I wanted to edit the screencast with Quicktime Pro – and I was getting silence when playing the video with mp3 audio in Quicktime. Switching to PCM (which I think is an uncompressed audio format) fixed that little problem for me.
From the LibTalk blog, The Determinants of Delight – this is a great article! Candi talks about how to delight library customers, and has a wonderful list of ways to accomplish this:
And now, think about that list being applied to library IT staff. What if the IT staff uses this same list in order to delight THEIR customers, the non-techie library staff? Hmm? I think it works the very same way.
I just saw Plainfield Public Library’s MySpace page (via Michael Stephens). Well, not really – take a look at the screenshot – their MySpace profile is set to private.
So what? Well… it’s a usability and experience thing. There will be MySpacers that want to peruse the page, see what programs the library has to offer, etc – and not want to sign up to be a friend of the library. By setting their profile to private, the library is basically blocking all their great MySpace content from ALL POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS. It’s sort of like saying “yes, you can enter our library building! Of course! But – do you have a library card? ‘Cause you can ONLY enter our fine library if you have a library card.”
The newspaper article about the page (aside – extremely cool they received press about their MySpace page!) quotes a librarian saying they’ve added more than 80 friends to the site since August. My guess? They’d get more friends if the profile WASN’T set to private.
Here’s a great list of video hosting sites (61 of them, to be exact). The list includes:
The only other thing I’d like to see on this list is if the site allows anyone to download the video (ie., YouTube doesn’t, blip.tv does). Very important to know! Hmm… maybe I’ll have to make my own list…
Anyway, hope you find this useful, too!
A Happy announcement in the form of a one act play/conversation:
As David Lee King and Michael Porter approach one another, the air crackles with dorky electricity.
Michael: “Hey, have we met?”
David: “Ummm, yeah. Don’t you remember those Internet Librarian Conferences, or when we presented at the Seattle Public Library Staff Day last month? We went out to dinner. Twice.”
Michael: “Ohhhh! Riiiight! That WAS you, wasn’t it? Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. So what do you know, old friend?”
David: “I know you’d better start remembering things, Jack! Oh, also, we have some exciting news to share with LibraryLand.”
Michael: “Is this another one of those self promotion posts that you find on LibraryMan.com all the time?”
David: “Well, yeah, but this one is better. This one has me in it, too.”
Michael: “That would be better. You are a very handsome man.”
David: “And bright too. As bright as the day is long.”
Michael: “Hmmmm….. Of our many outstanding qualities, humility is our most admirable.”
David: “I’ll say!”
Michael: “So can we get around to the announcement yet?”
David: “I suppose so, though I can fill a blog post with witty schnozz all day long.”
Michael: “One’s man’s witty is another man’s yawn.” I don’t know what that actually means, but people say that to me all the time.”
David: *yawns and stretches his neck*
Michael: *ahem* “So the announcement?”
David: “Yes, yes! Well today Michael and I got a letter from Kathleen Hughes, who is the editor of Public Libraries magazine. She said “I’m happy to let you know that the Public Libraries Advisory Committee would love to welcome you aboard as the new Internet Spotlight columnists. Your first column, for the March/April issue would be due on Jan 26. The column can be up to 2000 words.”
Michael: “Wow! That’s cool! We’re going to be the new authors of the Internet Spotlight column in Public Libraries magazine?! Didn’t Steven Cohen write that for years?”
David: “He sure did. And he did an awesome job, too.”
Michael: “So it takes two of us to fill his shoes?”
David: “They told us we had to bring our own shoes, ’cause we couldn’t fill Steven’s.”
Michael: “Well I love shoes, but that is a lot of pressure, man!”
David: “I know! We have the gig, but now we actually have to write good stuff.”
Michael: “Oh that should be easy for us. You are a very hard worker.”
David: “And handsome, don’t forget how handsome I am.”
Michael: “Exactly.”
David: “Why don’t you tell folks exactly WHAT we’ll write about?”
Michael: “Oh, what WON’T we write about? Now is the most exciting time ever for library professionals, in large part because of “internety” things. So that’s what we’ll write about: practical, cool, thought provoking “internety” things.
David: “Dude, “Internety” isn’t even a word! You don’t really want to start off talking about nonexistent words, do you? What kind of precedent does THAT set?
Michael: “I told you that you were a hard worker! You’re already doing a great job of editing and we haven’t even written a word yet!”
David: “You’re right, aren’t you? I really am awesome.”
Michael: “Hear, hear! So anyway, about the Public Libraries Magazine gig, I basically expect this column to mostly write itself.”
David: “I heard the internet can do that now.”
Michael: “Well then that’s what our first column should be about!”
David: “That’s not funny. This is serious business!”
Michael: “It really is though, isn’t it? We’ll be able to share practical technologies and highlight internet tools librarians can really use in their everyday work!”
David: “Well I don’t know about everybody else, but you’ve got ME ready to use the internet!”
Michael: “Me too!”
David: “What?”
Michael: “Exactly.”
David: “I am so going to edit what you write.”
Michael: “Whew! Thanks goodness. I’m looking forward to it.”
David: “Me too.”
Michael: “So when will the first column show up?”
David: “In the March/April issue!”
Michael: “Will our pieces be in the May/June, July/Aug, Sept/Oct, Nov/Dec issues too?”
David: “Yeah buddy!”
Michael: “Sweet!”
David: “Totally sweet!”
Michael: “David, you have to promise me our articles will sound more professional than this conversion.”
David: “Well of course! Thankfully nobody can hear this conversation so I think we’re okay.”
Michael: *clicks off tape recorder in pocket*
(Thanks to Michael Porter for this pic and to Michael Stephens for this pic), and see Michael’s version of this post, too!
Are you a web programmer? Then you might just be interested in this job ad at my library. If you’re curious, feel free to ask me more about the job!
I just discovered Quintura, a new visual search engine interface (found via Robert Scoble’s blog). On the surface, it looks similar to Grokker or KartOO (two other better-known visual search engines).
You can play with Quintura’s online demo, but the real deal is downloading their Quintura Search product. It offers a visual map of searches done using an impressive number of search engines, including Google, Amazon, Ask, MSN search, etc.
The biggest downside for me? Sorta silly, really… but I got extremely excited in a geekd-out way when I read their “What is Quintura” description. Why? Because they mentioned LIBRARIES. Here’s what they said:
“Have you ever raked through the paper card index of a big library? You have to find the necessary letter (or their combination), take the correct drawer, and start sorting through the cards. Ring any bells?” (ok – they obviously haven’t been in a library for at least 10 years – I’d be surprised if most of their customers have seen a CARD catalog. But oh well…).
Then they go on… “But on the web, what do you do? You are on your own. Until now. Quintura is the very know-all librarian!” (ahem… Yikes!).
Then, they have an imagined conversation with a “favorite search engine,” which I think is supposed to be the search engine you usually use (ie., Google, Yahoo, etc.). And the conversation is about finding … books on physics. Hmm…
OK – besides not having stepped into a library in awhile, they also don’t get that Google, Yahoo, etc. can’t REALLY find books in your library. Or maybe this thing was written by those college students who actually think you CAN find books in a local library using a search engine.
Anyway… I was really hoping, with all this library/search engines comparison text, that the search software I downloaded would interface with, say, MY LIBRARY’S CATALOG. Now, that’d be really cool. But no luck – it only gives me that list of search engines I mentioned earlier.
Hopefully, they’ll create a version of their product that can interface with localized search engines, OPACs, etc. here’s hoping!
Blog by David Lee King, runs on the cool Thesis WordPress Theme
email: davidleeking [at] gmail [dot] com | Twitter | Facebook
