A couple of weeks ago, Jessamyn over at librarian.net posted about her experience with photo permissions at a library she was visiting. Interesting story – make sure to read the comments!

That reminded me that my  library recently redid our photo permission policy. Like many libraries, our previous photo policy required us to get everyone appearing in the photos to sign-off before we could use the photo … which was pretty hard to do. We ended up not taking many photos!

So, a group of us (admin, me, and a some of our marketing team) met with our lawyer to get some clarification … and ended up with a more flexible, modern photo permissions guidelines!

Here’s what we do now (reposted from our staff website):

A recent conversation with the library’s attorney led to some changes in how we proceed with taking pictures and/or video of our library customers. We hope this encourages more photographing and videotaping of library moments and publishing of them online.

When Do We Need to Use Photo Permission Forms?

For Models. For example, say you bring in your child, grandkid, cousin, friend, etc. and shoot photos of him or her, he or she is acting as a model and needs to sign a photo permission form.

For Close-ups. For example, you are holding a program. You take a close-up photo of one child because you love the expression on that child’s face. You need that child (or his or her parent in this case) to sign a photo permission form.

When Do I Not Need to Use the Form?

At programs held at the library. Want to take pictures at your program? Now it’s easier than ever. (yeah! no more backs-of-heads shots!) In lieu of photo permission forms, programers will need to announce at the beginning of each program that “the library may photograph or videotape you for library promotional purposes. Notify library staff if you do not want to be photographed.” HOWEVER,  if you zoom in for a close-up on one particular person in a large group, you will still need to get a photo permission form signed from that person.

In addition, Communications/Marketing has placed the following announcement in Oct./Nov.‘s connectnow, where it will be published with each edition. That does not mean you can neglect to make the announcement at the beginning of each program.

“Programs, events and classes are photographed or videotaped for library promotional purposes. Notify library staff if you prefer not to be photographed.”

That is not to take the place of the official announcement at the beginning of each event.

So – much easier paperwork for us (as in almost none). Also, this allows us to walk around the library and take random shots that we can use on our website, etc. This of course just applies to library staff. Patrons can take photos in our library – no problems. If they are setting up a formal photo session (we have that once in awhile) or if they are local news organizations, they need to talk to our head of marketing and communications first.

That’s what we do, anyway. What types of permissions does your library need for photographs at the library?

Library 101 has launched! There are a few things you should know about the project:

• It’s a collaborative project – Michael Porter and I created it (with over 500 others!)
• There’s a website for the Library 101 Project
• There’s a video (watch above, at the project site, or on YouTube)
• Download the mp3 for your iPods/favorite mp3 player!
• Become a Fan at our Library 101 Facebook Page
• Even better – read one of the many essays attached to the project, written by some top-notch librarians
• And … read our 101 Resources  and Things to Know essay, complete with 101 links of things Michael and I think you should know!

But even better than watching the video, listening to the song, or reading an essay is this – please participate by commenting! Let us know what YOU think is a “Library 101″ for your library – what do you think librarians need to know to succeed? Tell us in the comments attached to each essay!

Originally posted at Libraryman.com. Michael says:

As of today, the Library 101 Project pre-launch page is live! This page is a teaser page at this point with launch info and a link to the Library 101 facebook page (where you can become a fan and get project updates). We’ll have a few prizes around both the pre-launch here and next week’s full on Library 101 Project launch! Woo hoo!

fyi, Next Wednesday at 2:00pm PST, this page will host all three of the main Library 101 Project pages, including the song, video, nearly 20 essays from Libraryland thought leaders and a resource list of things to help library staff keep up, get ahead and feel good about library work…even as technology and culture evolve in unexpected ways!

Michael Porter and I like to make videos. Music videos. Music videos about libraries! Remember our last one?

Well … we have a new one coming out called Library 101! We plan to debut it at Internet Librarian 2009 (during our presentation about making videos on October 28), and we are pretty stoked about it, too! Why, you ask? Well…

• The music rocks harder than last time
• We have turned up the video production a few notches (Michael is turning into quite the video producer!)
• We have a website complete with essays from some amazing people
• We found a sponsor (thanks, Information Today!)

But most important – the message. Library 101 tells a story. A story about the evolution of libraries and librarians. Historically, we grew and evolved to a certain point. Some of us are continuing to evolve, others are not quite there yet but are working to get there.

The goal of our song, our video, the website and essays? To inspire you to grow, to evolve, and to change your communities!

Michael does a great job of explaining Library 101 on Maurice Coleman’s regular T is for Training podcast. Take a listen. And more importantly, take a listen and a look on October 28 – I will post the video as soon as it goes live, so stay tuned!

Photo by libraryman

FYI – Stephanie Gerding and Pam MacKellar have a video contest connected with the book they’re working on. From Stephanie:

See Your Grant Success Story in a Neal-Schuman Book by Stephanie Gerding and Pam MacKellar. 16 library grant success stories were highlighted in our last Neal-Schuman book, Grants for Libraries: A How-To-Do-It Manual. Now is your chance to be included in our next book! Readers would love to learn about a successful grant your library has received.

This time we have a VIDEO CONTEST! Just submit a 5 minute video or screencast about your library grant success story by Oct. 30, 2009 for your chance to be spotlighted in our new book and DVD. Your video could include a tour of a grant project, interviews with grant team members or people who benefited from the grant, tips about grant writing or any part of the grant process. More details are available online and you can submit at YouTube in the Library Grants Group.

Sounds like fun for someone!

Read all about it here! Or just read this … remember that song/video Michael Porter and I created last year? Well… we’re at it again – with Library 101!

Here’s what Michael says:

“Getting into this video is actually really easy. Simply take and share a picture of YOU posing with a 0 and a 1! (Tagging it with library101 on flickr will be really helpful). We even have the flickr group linked above [ok, I linked it here] where you can put your 101 pictures. So c’mon! Do it and get just a little bit famous! Your family and friends will love finding you pop up in the video (and maybe even your coworkers?)! Put your kids in it! How about the family dog!? And you know grandma loves the library too, riiight? The most interesting your submission the more it will be featured, so get creative!

Look for the song and video in October of 2009 (debuting at a special “Connecting Through “Lights, Cameras & Action” session at the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterrey, California).”

Now all Michael and I have to do is this:

• write words for the song
• Create and record the music
• Somehow fly Michael to Kansas to record the song and shoot some video
• Get Michael back to Seattle so he can video edit like a madman
• collaborate on a multimedia presentation for Internet Librarian like you’ve never seen before…

Whew! I’m already getting psyched!

Pic courtesy of Libraryman

I’ve been asked by quite a few people, so … here’s how I made my Facebook Pages screencast:

1. I used Jing Pro to record the screencast. There’s a free version – I whipped out $14.95 (have to pay it every year) for the pro version. Why? The pro version comes with that cool “webcam in screen” effect I used at the beginning and end of the screencast. It also records in MPEG-4 format, so I could easily edit it. It only records up to 5 minutes at a time, which is no problem – just record separate clips, then dump each clip into a video editing program (more on that in a sec).
2. I plugged in a Samson CO1U USB Condenser Mic to get good quality sound on the speaking parts. It came out a little quiet – will need to play with that some more!
3. Once the parts and pieces were recorded in Jing, I dumped each screencast clip into Apple’s iMovie, which is an easy-to-use video editor. I didn’t do much there – added a fade in and out to the beginning/ending of the screencast, spliced the clips together, added a bit of text … and removed all my goof-ups, extraneous pauses and “uhms” where I could. My goal was to get the screencast under 10 minutes so I could dump it to YouTube (and I was successful!).

And that’s about all! The combo of Jing Pro and iMovie worked great, the mic was easy to use … any questions? Anyone else used Jing Pro?

Yes, I had a new iPhone waiting for me when I got home from Florida (among other things). I upgraded to the new iPhone 3GS … which takes video! Here’s what I’m finding out so far about the video quality:

One of my first videos, uploaded to blip.tv:

The video quality is about the same as you’d find on a Flip camera, so not too shabby! It films in QuickTime .mov format, using AAC for audio and H.264 for the video codec. It makes a standard-sized video of 640X480 when held in landscape mode.

Here’s a video I uploaded directly to YouTube (the new iPhone allows you to do that):

So – I like having a video camera ALWAYS with me, in my pocket. What I’m not quite used to yet is how the iPhone decides when it’s going to be in landscape or vertical modes. For example, this video …

… was filmed and sent to YouTube in landscape mode … but it came out vertical (fyi – this shows off the iPhone’s macro video mode, too). This isn’t the first time that’s happened to me. Out of the four videos I’ve posted to YouTube so far, two are in landscape mode and two are vertical.

And that’s not the only place I’ve discovered quirks. Look what happened in iPhoto!

Even weirder in iMovie – check out the thumbnails iMovie generated – the thumbnails are sideways are squished for some strange reason, but the actual video is in landscape mode!

It’s quite possible I just haven’t figured out something yet, but this is a bit irksome. Otherwise, uploading to a variety of places seems to work fine. So far, I have been able to upload my videos to:

• my computer, to iPhoto and iMovie for editing (haven’t tried importing to Final Cut Express, but I’m sure that will work fine, too)
• YouTube
• Flickr, through Flickr’s uploading tool and via email
• blip.tv via blip’s uploading tool (the first video in this post). I have also tried blip’s mobile email uploader, but haven’t seen any video show up in my blip account yet. We’ll see what happens with that!

And one more thing – editing. Yes, you can do some extremely basic editing of your iPhone video – right on the iPhone. Here’s how it looks:

See the timeline at the top of the video? You can click the beginning and ending points and trim the video’s beginning and ending. And that’s all. But that’s ok – I’ll probably end up dumping video to my Mac anyway for editing later. For some people, this will be pretty useful stuff.

So – my iPhone video report so far… will david figure out how to succeed in landscape mode? Will Apple usher in a new era of vertical video? Don’t hold your breath to find out!

On Friday afternoon, I was interviewed again about Twitter – this time, by our local NBC affiliate, channel 27 news. They interviewed me, our head of Communications and Marketing, and our Communications Editor (I think that’s her title). It was a fun interview – here are some pics from the interview, and here’s a link to the web version of the interview.

Hannah Wooldridge interviewed us, and during the interview, asked me to ask my Twitter friends some questions. First we said “hi” – and 36 people quickly responded with some form of “hi” back within minutes (interestingly, the first reply came from the Netherlands!).

Then I asked this: “what should our tv reporter ask about twitter? What’s cool“? Here are the replies I received:

• ShannonAronin@davidleeking Where to find the tools to make it useful? Answer: We Are Media.
• joshuamneff@davidleeking it’s cool that worldwide conversations take place on Twitter!
• hbraum@davidleeking (& reporter) hashtags are the true power of twitter imo #23smt and #libcampks09 2 other recent local hashtag usage
• DJ345@davidleeking Networking with interesting people all over the world. It is such an easy way to share information.
• jdelagardelle@davidleeking #tscpl for the interviewer: Cool is all about who you want to follow. Choose your peeps carefully. Librarians R the BEST!
• civillibrarian@davidleeking How libraries are using it to reach a broader audience?
• jokrausdu@davidleeking Many ways to communicate through it, such as Tweetie, tweetdeck, twitpic, or twitter.com and dozens of other ways.
• Suelibrarian@davidleeking tell the reporter hi from Perth Western Australia and that you have a global audience
• pcc24@davidleeking Interesting to think about what Twitter can add to the experience of events like SXSW i.e. what ‘being there’ really means.
• sirexkathryn@davidleeking Usually I’m in Western Australia with @suelibrarian, but today I visited you here bcs of a twitter invitation last night.
• sophiebiblio@davidleeking it’s cool that even though I’m now a solo librarian, I still feel connected to my colleagues!
• shawncalhoun@davidleeking I suggest a discussion could be abt Twitter and innovation. Twitter works on so many levels because its not prescriptive IMHO
• jdelagardelle@davidleeking http://searchenginewatch.co… #tscpl Reporter: Use Twitter as an education tool: Immediate feedback.
• curiouschild@davidleeking It’s cool that people are asking for and receiving help via Twitter.

Everyone who replied – you rock – thanks! Everyone – make sure to read and think about the ideas in the above responses. Twitter started with a simple question – “what are you doing?” The ideas presented above go WAY beyond that. It touches on the community experience I wrote about in my book!

Speaker – Eric Feng, Hulu

I arrived late at this one, but still took a boatload of notes. Online video is amazing, and Hulu is right there in the thick of it! Here’s what I heard:

Video 3.0:

continual growth of broadband:

• median US broadband speed in 2008 was 2.3 Mb/s – still lots of room to grow. Some can get 10 Mb/s
• In Japan, the median broadband speed is 63 Mb/s !!!

Video technology innovatin is continuing

• better hardware – more powerful PC CPUs and GPUs
• better video codecs – H264 as great open source example thats used in many places (ie., YouTube and DVD, for example)
• Better video platforms – multi-bitrate streaming, intelligent buffering
• iPhone has the processing speed of a PC around 1998-1999

Marketplace for premium content is there

• video content has changed
• now full TV shows are online
• there are fully-produced, professional-quality web-only shows

Online video ads expected to grow 45% to $850 million in 2009

• people/companies can monetize content
• 150% growth in 2007 for online tv
• 200% growth in 2008

Stuff about Hulu:

The Underwater pyramid – great example of a pyramid with the tip sticking out of the water – the tip is what you see, a small company. The stuff under the water is all the mega technology required to make that company run. It’s a huge technology base.

“Worthy or remark” – Hulu’s rallying cry. They want their stuff to be this, and want people to say this about Hulu when Hulu’s “not in the room”

Great content deserves great quality – 90% of videos available in high resolution 480p – that’s standard def TV/DVD quality video. Wow.

Closed captions to enhance video viewing:

• thousands of videos have this on Hulu
• it’s incredibly hard to do
• they have to sync timecode
• the V companies store the closed caption content in a variety of ways, including in SMIL and XML, and they have to figure out how to parse it into the videos

Obsess over every pixel

• review process for every thumbnail on the site
• they actually look at every one
• 16X9 thumbnails, optimized for different sizes
• working on the experience – they’re obsessed over the details
• they actually used technology to automatically crop shows/thumbnails that were sized 4X3 to 16X9
• They made it a game in their company, complete with prizes – they had 20,000 thumbnails to do

Innovations you use, but don’t notice

• query-aware thumbnails
• same video has different thumbnails depending on your search query

Aside – Eric played their newest Hulu TV ad today – it’s not out on TV yet…

Q – when will Hulu be on my TV/Set top box?

A – still focused on the PC and browser. He said in regards to the TV/Video content world, “they’re the tallest midget in the room”

Q – Canadians can’t get Hulu – when will you be in other countries? I guess Hulu is only available in the US right now.

A – it’s because of rights – they have to sometimes negotiate those rights show-by-show, region-by-region. Wow. They are committed to worldwide. And Eric said “Canada first. Promise.”

Q/A – about Ad revenue – Hulu actually makes more money on with ads online for, example, the show 3rd Rock than the traditional broadcast companies make with traditional commericals. That’s amazing! And they share their ad revenue with the owners of the content.