Mary Markwalter & Melissa VanTassel, Coffey County Library (www.cclibraryks.org)
- wanted to do an online storytime - staff member figured out how to do it for free.
- They use Frontpage!
- Copyright issues - you can use public domain fairytales and not worry about copyright
- If a publisher doesn’t allow something, they went directly to the author - the author said yes, and asked the publisher to do it - and the publisher contacted the library and gave permission
- offering things like online storytimes helps to make your website a digital branch of your library - coolness.
- 24/7 access to stories!
- Had a handout, “Steps for Creating a Basic Online Storytime”
Walked through playing an audio file
Discussed cheap microphones
Speaker created an audio file, merged them using Sound Recorder (!!!) - showed how easy it is to make an audio file. Editing is extremely basic - you can delete before or after a specific point.
Discussion about story length, poems vs stories, jokes and riddles…
Important point - it doesn’t have to all be done by you! Get staff involvement.
Discussed how they create the webpage for the online story
Showed storylineonline.net as an example of a well-done, next step storytime.
Easy improvements they could make (these are my ideas):
- They’re using .wav files - they should be using mp3 files
- They’re using Frontpage to make webpages - Frontpage doesn’t exist anymore, so… they’ll need to find new software
- They’re using Microsoft’s Sound Recorder. It only records 60 seconds of audio at a time… probably should be using Audacity.
Very cool that they’re using tools they know and already have to do something innovative!
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Hi Dave, thanks for coming. Here’s an 8.x link for the LifeRay Information Portal — http://hzip.pittstate.edu It was being configured, literally, as the announcement came out a month ago.
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