by davidleeking on January 31, 2007
Remember awhile back, when I posted about ALA’s District Dispatch blog? Jenny Levine commented (among others) – which is good, because she “has the power” (said with that superhero echoey effect) to fix that kind of thing.
And she did! today I can successfully listen to and download the audio file manually, and I can also drop the RSS feed into iTunes and automatically download ALA audio goodness to my iPod (which I just did, too).
Thanks, ALA!
by davidleeking on January 31, 2007
From comments on my ALA Midwinter 2007: It Can Be Confusing post, Nancy Dowd asks:
“David, What great quality video – what kind of camera did you use? Any hints on how you posted the video?”
Cool question, and thanks! Here’s what I do:
- I currently use a Sanyo Xacti HD1A camcorder (here’s a great review of the Xacti). It takes mpeg-4 video and saves it on an SD card, rather than the usual Mini DV cassette.
- When I shot the video, I did it in little chunks, as I was walking to the session.
- Next comes downloading the clips to my PC – I can either use the software that came with the Xacti or I can take out the SD card, plug in a USB SD card reader, and upload the clips that way.
Then the real fun begins!
- I wanted to edit the video in Windows Movie Maker, so I first had to turn the mpeg-4 video files into AVI files. I did this with the MP4Cam2AVI Easy Converter
- Then, I dropped the files into Windows Movie Maker and edited away.
- Once I was satisfied with my final movie, I saved the movie as an AVI file
- Then I opened the AVI file in Quicktime Pro and saved it as a much smaller quicktime formatted movie
- Finally, I uploaded the movie into my account at blip.tv (and also my youtube account).
And a few video-taking tips, too:
- Film more footage than you need – good for editing later.
- Always film a little more before and after each clip – that way you don’t end up clipping off your words (like I do sometimes).
- Edit your video. Then edit again. Then cut half of that. Web video should be SHORT (mine clocked in at just over 1 minute).
So there you go!
by davidleeking on January 31, 2007
From my comments – “Dopa is reborn as DOPA jr… ” (thanks, Steve!)
From the full article: “Sen. Ted Stevens, R-AK, introduced S.B. 49 at the beginning of the
current legislative session. The bill is reported to have identical
language to DOPA, with one addition. According to a report on ZDNet, Stevens added language that had been
part of a failed communications bill that required all sexually
explicit websites to be labeled as such, or impose prison sentences on
website operators who fail to comply.”
Just an FYI to those who hadn’t heard about it yet…
by davidleeking on January 30, 2007
This is part 5 of my Inviting Participation in Web 2.0 series of articles.
So far, I’ve introduced both active and passive forms of inviting
participation using web 2.0 tools, and explained how to do both using
blogs. This time, let’s examine MySpace.
MySpace is like a closed web 2.0 free-for-all, complete with blogs,
shared calendars, “friends,” videos and photos that can be commented
on, music (some can be downloaded), customized webpage “skins,” and IM
- and most of this can be searched or browsed. And the kids that
frequent my library absolutely LOVE it. This post will point out ways
to invite participation using MySpace.
First, for active types of invitation – asking, of course! But one can ask using some cool MySpace-specific tools, like:
- Event invites: Up at the top of your MySpace user account page is a
menu bar that includes Events. Events allows you to post your event
(think cool library event here), including all the juicy details like
time, location, and event description. The active part comes when you
send the Event – because that Event is sent to all your MySpace Friends
(ie., everyone included on your Friends list who hasn’t blocked
Events). It pays to make a lot of MySpace Friends!
- Bulletin Board: Bulletins are messages that are sent to all your friends at the same
time. Think of them as a group email. Yet another tool that allows
direct communication with everyone on your Friends list.
- Blog: Blogs show up on your profile page, and other MySpace users can subscribe to them.
- Invites: Why not invite local MySpace users to be your friend? MySpace
allows you to search by zip code – go ahead, check it out. How many
MySpacers can you find in your zip code? There are over 3000 in mine.
Passive types of invitation:
- Make an attractive MySpace skin. Better yet, allow your teen advisory
council to make the skin for you. They might take more ownership of the
page that way (which, in turn, invites them to participate)
- Allow users to be your Friend without having to take extra steps
(like knowing your last name). That immediately cuts down on the number
of friends you’ll get.
- Allow comments
- Use MySpace Forums and Groups (think discussion boards, listservs, and chatrooms) to start interesting conversations.
- Take inviting photos (and repost to Flickr)
- Take inviting video (and repost that video to YouTube)
- Include direct links to your catalog to new books, videos, and music at your library.
- In blogs and something called “Blurbs,” point to things your target
audience would be interested in (and link to those things!).
- IM – use MySpace IM and also allow anyone to IM you. Also post your AOL IM name on your MySpace page.
- Share your calendar.
This is certainly not everything you can do using MySpace! Does anyone
have some ideas to add? I’d be interested in hearing them.
web2.0, library2.0, participation, myspace
by davidleeking on January 29, 2007
Just a random thought on customer service. I’m currently reading a book by Jim Palmer (an old friend from my days in Nashville) titled Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God. It’s an interesting book (though I realize not everyone’s cup of tea).
Palmer mentions loving libraries, and then goes on to say this (it’s not really the point of his chapter, but it struck me nonetheless): “Sometimes you see strange things in libraries… there’s the time I saw the librarian at the counter turn away from a departing (and apparently difficult) customer and flip her the bird out of everyone’s view except mine at the water fountain. It made for a strange moment when our eyes met, and it burst my bubble that all librarians are mild-mannered Mother Teresa types whose greatest joy in life is simply helping people find books” (pg. 48).
Besides the goofy giggles I get from the seeing the phrase “flip her the bird” in a Christian non-fiction book (I have a quirky sense of humor), this scenario really did give me pause. Why? Well… think about your library staff for a sec. Are their customer service cups half-empty or half-full? Are they prone to to be reactive or proactive? Do they go the extra mile to help customers find something, or do they say “it’s up on the next floor” and point vaguely to the elevator? Do they “flip her the bird” when no one’s looking (or at least, when they THINK no one’s looking)?
Well?
I know some libraries that have mandatory customer service training for all new employees – I think that’s great. Possibly those libraries that do great customer service need to “share the joy” with other libraries?
by davidleeking on January 29, 2007
ALA Midwinter was a big conference – one that had many meetings in many different hotels. To the right is a video of me trying (almost unsuccessfully) to get to a program at the conference. I was confused – the hotel the program was held at, as far as I could tell, didn’t have any signs. As in, any signs providing the name of the hotel! Once I got to the program, it was great.
And that sort of summed up my first ALA Midwinter experience. Looking back, it was a good conference. But for us first timers, it can also be highly confusing! What was confusing?
- The conference session listing didn’t really say much, and there were lots of them. Someone told me to get the full session info, I’d need to go to each division website to read about the sessions. Yikes!
- Obviously hotel signage could have been better (not ALA’s fault)
- I didn’t realize these weren’t sessions but were rather “discussions.”
- Some “discussions” really were discussions, while some were really normal sessions with speakers and then a longer q & a time at the end.
- What if you want to get involved with ALA or a division chapter more (as in jjoining a committee). How do you do that?
- Are all meetings open to everyone? Council sessions? I don’t know, cause there was no place to read about it.
So – just my experience… I’m sure it’ll improve with experience!
ALA_MW_2007, MW2007, ala2007
by davidleeking on January 29, 2007
I attended the ACRL Instruction Section Current Issue Digest and Discussion Forum on digital gaming in library instruction. It was pretty interesting – here are my notes, mainly on comments and questions I found interesting, in fairly random order (with two wicked cool ideas that came up, too):
- You could use Second Life as a platform to create a game
- Sight and hearing disabled students – can you meet ADA requirements with games?
- someone mentioned partnering with computer science departments to develop games
- Wicked Cool Idea #1: Someone is incorporating gaming language into classes – what a cool idea! They use “power ups” – they frame the the instruction session into a storyline, and use powerups (ie., boolean and, or, and not searches) when the powerups are needed.
- Someone mentioned the simulation games the military uses (in defense of if games work or not for instruction)
- Cold Stone Creamery uses a game during their initial employee training
- Someone mentioned the game Neverwinter Nights – it has an add-on that allows you to build customized modules. You could build a “find stuff in the library” type of game. You can even design the conversations in this game.
- Wicked Cool Idea #2: Someone uses Guess the Google in their instruction classes (it’s a guess what keyword is used to find what’s displayed on the screen). She has students yell out responses, it gets students into it, and it leads to discussion on keyword and phrase searching – in a much more fun way!
- Money and time were mentioned alot.
- Jenny Levine’s LTR on gaming was mentioned.
- One funny thing (to me) was discussed a little, too. I heard “is it in the literature?” and “is there empirical research of the educational impact… ” of educational gaming. Someone else mentioned they didn’t want to do it if it falls flat (I assume, in the literature again). I wasn’t feeling terribly brave that day, so I didn’t speak up … but I thought about saying this: “if you wait for “Empirical Research” and for games to appear in “The Literature,” you will be followers. The cool stuff isn’t created by following, but by innovating.
ALA_MW_2007, MW2007, ala2007
by davidleeking on January 29, 2007
Mary Hollerich, Audrey Huff, Michael Porter, and Michael Stephens spoke.
Mary Hollerich (National Library of Medicine):
- Spoke a little about kids today: different learning styles, tech savvy, collaborative, thriving on change, multitaskers, learning resource sharing on the job
- Resource sharing is more than just ILL: blurred boundaries with ILL, circulation, and acquisitions
- Expanded concept of resource sharing: lots of cooperation – in reference, collection development, cataloging, even storage facilities…
- Grad school wishlist: target audience: future managers of resource sharing products and services
- keepin it real: internships, assistantships, practicums
- She’d love to see online continuing education courses (hmm – SHE could do them using OPAL!)
- Also use listservs, blogs and wikis for discussion
- She’d also like to see a mentoring type program that pairs a “newbie” with a more experienced practitioner
Audrey Huff (Northwestern University School of Law):
A Next-Gen LIS graduate is:
- comfortable with technology and change
- a user of resources
- pro user and pro access
- aware of the professional forums available
- has collaborative experience – can work with teams
She took lots of reference classes, but there were no classes on access services (no ILL, circ, resource sharing classes) – where are the classes/issues relevant to resource sharing?
Her advice:
- do internships (become a practitioner as soon as possible)
- look at the literature
On the job: she’s looking for info – what works, how to use stats, how to understand patron expectations, understanding resource-sharing platforms and systems, etc… (me – all the stuff library school doesn’t teach!)
Michael Porter (WebJunction):
- The title on his powerpoint is “Gimme Gimme Gimme” – cool
- Libraries are two things: content and community
step 1: break down barriers
- institutional barriers
- personal fears… another type of barriers
step 2: show your true colors (went from black and white slide to a color slide – nice)
- sometimes hard to think about the “me” in “gimme” – it’s ok to think about ourselves – we want the same things
step 3: effectively use me…
- me is our users
- me is You, too!
- We can be librarians, and we can also be users…
- Lots of people here use Netflix – wow!
- Move from calling it ILL to calling it Fulfillment (that’s inserting a more customer service, corporate mentality into the library)
- Give me what I want
- be there for me when I want you – be available when needed
- give me my stuff the way I want it – content not container idea
- Be where the user is
- prove your importance to ME!
- Let ME do it myself! Unmediated ILL…
Michael Stephens (Dominican University):
Pondering the future…
- Cool new librarian titles
- Immersive Learning Librarian (the gaming librarian – wow)
- “we are looking for a librarian 2.0 in preparation for a library 2.0 world” – from a job ad
- Nextgen Librarian – at Wayne State University….
- talked about how the world has changed via web 2.0 stuff
- Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything … looks like a good book
- showed lots of examples of what libraries are doing to reach out in new ways
- “the trendspotting librarian” – we need to understand what’s coming next
- use wired, etc to trendspot – ads, articles
- the adaptive librarian: education flexible professionals, you have to be flexible
- the experience librarian – coolness.
- Experience – Lunds grocery store is reserving community rooms…
- the sharing librarian – we need to be open, decentralized, etc…
- we need to: learn to learn, adapt to change, etc…
ALA_MW_2007, MW2007, ala2007
by davidleeking on January 25, 2007
Michael Porter and I decided to test out DDR, which was set up at ALA’s Techsource booth at the ALA Midwinter meeting just held in Seattle, WA. As you can see from the video, we had a good time!
Michael Porter and I decided to test out DDR, which was set up at ALA’s Techsource booth at the ALA Midwinter meeting just held in Seattle, WA. As you can see from the video, we had a good time!
Update: forgot to add – Beth Hoffman of the Adventures in Library School blog shot the video for me (I can’t dance, but I REALLY can’t dance and take shoot video at the same time!). Thanks Beth!
ALA_MW_2007, MW2007, ala2007
by davidleeking on January 21, 2007
These are notes from the session I participated in…
Lisa (need to find her last name!):
- They created I-Go, a library toolbar. Quicklinks to library resources. The search on the toolbar searches lots of stuff (ie., library resources). Cool. It DOESN’T search Google.
- MySpace: www.myspace.com/undergradlibrary – cool URL. They have chosen to not actively recruit friends. They repost info into the myspace blog. Have a federated search tool embedded within their myspace page. Also have a link to add this search tool thingie onto your myspace page. Cool. And they allow the search to show results without proxy – then you have to enter username etc to actually get articles
- Facebook: David Ward is their Facebook profile… had to use a name. And then plastered their real library name on the page, so it appears in searches.
- Facebook flyers: displays as an ad to their UI network. $10 a day.
- Second Life: are starting to work with this via the CyberCity infoisland thing.
I spoke next (Jenny took good notes)…
Jenny Levine:
- ALA is exploring creating online community for members.
- Not sure why she posts to flickr, other than it’s fun.
- Has a friend that keeps friends updated with Facebook.
- Joined the Facebook group “when I was your age, Pluto was a planet”
- “social retailing” – HD monitor that feeds out of the dressing room, so friends can see what you’re trying on… and help you decide what looks good on you.
- Twitter – text message your status… why do this?
- Yahoo groups as an example of online community – her example is a very active group.
- Ways to interact: use ebsco’s rss feed, other library feeds… they can display on the yahoo groups page! That way you support the group and go where the users are… cool idea!
ALA_MW_2007, MW2007, ala2007
