Jane and I had a lot of fun with our project. We used Camtasia, a comercial software package, to record the screencast, but everything else was done with Web 2.0 applications. To write the script, we used PB Wiki and it worked really well for us. Because Jane lives in Northfield and I live in Minneapolis we weren’t able to get together often. Using the wiki enabled us to collaborate on the script on our own schedules, completing it before we met to record the screencast.
Recording the screencast was slightly awkward for me. I’m not one who likes to hear the sound of her own voice, and finding a voice that didn’t make me feel cheesy and didn’t make me sound bored was challenging.
Our biggest challenges came with YouTube and overcoming what its compression did to the readability of the video. We adjusted the settings based on recommendations we found on the Internet and YouTube. We also edited the Camtasia video to zoom in on areas where we felt important detail had been lost.
If we had not been successful in uploading a useable video to YouTube, we considered using blip.tv. The quality of video on blip.tv is better, and the viewing area is larger. However, we wanted to use YouTube because the user base is greater.
For our presentation, we used Google Docs. I like the presentation tool better than the word processing tool. When I tried to write my paper in Google Docs, I got frustrated with the formatting options and went back to word.
My Muxtape made it into Wired, sort of. “Who cares if a robot-centric roundup sounds better in theory?”
Personally, I think songs about robots are the greatest things to happen to music since the theremin was invented. But, since I technically am more obsessed with the idea of robots than actual robots (except for Clocky, my robotic alarm clock), I shouldn’t complain too loudly that someone might suggest my idea is better in theory.
Filed under: Uncategorized
OCLC’s 2005 report Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources shows that only a small percentage of people begin their information search at a library or library web site. If it is the library’s mission to connect people with information, we need to find ways to bring the library to the patrons.
For my paper, I am researching ways Web 2.0 technologies can be used to extend the reach of a library’s collection, both digital and print. In a nutshell:
RSS can be used to push the collection or relevant information directly to the users. Websites such as Flickr engage the user with the collection, and can be used to inspire patrons to go back to the library. Libraries can create widgets that can be used in social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) inserts user tags, reviews, and recommendations easily into an OPAC to enhance findability and readers advisory. LibraryThing & Goodreads users can find a copy of a book by using the WorldCat link on the book’s profile page. Creating Wikipedia articles and/or external links can promote and drive traffic to your library’s digital or special collection.
Did you know that if you email a full text html article from Wilson Web to your gmail account, you can save it as a Google Doc? I didn’t. But I do now. Heck yeah! This is going to save a lot of paper.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: archives, exhibits, flickr, Library 2.0, library of congress, web 2.0
As I’ve been thinking about Library 2.0 & Web 2.0, I’m reminded of research I did I few years ago on creating archival web exhibits. In particular, I’m reminded of an 1999 article by Ted Ansbacher on user based experience, in which he wrote that “the strength of exhibits is in actively engaging visitors and this is also their primary educational contribution.” According to Ansbacher, “building in many possible paths that the inquiry cycle might take…contributes to make the exhibit engaging and helps in accommodating the range of interests, prior experiences, and skill levels that visitors bring with them.”
Phyllis DiBianco, in her article “Interactive Museums and Exhibits,” argued that the benefits to web exhibits is that they are “dynamic, allowing students to break away from linear, text-based thinking, to follow their interests in ways that reflect their true paths of thinking and learning.”
I think that this interactivity, or participation, is what attracts me to Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. I also think it speaks to the success of the Library of Congress Commons project on Flickr. As Ansbacher says, they are engaging and they allow you to contribute.
DiBianco, Phyllis. “Interactive Museums and Exhibits.” Information Searcher 14, no. 3, (2004): 4-12.
Ansbacher, Ted. “Experience, Inquiry, and Making Meaning.” Exhibitionist 18, no. 2, (1999): 22-26.
Fun from the Chronicle of Higher Education: The Academic Zodiac
Now that I’m on the brink of finishing the program (go August!), the last thing I need to do is start rethinking my vocation. My astrological profiles are never even close, regardless of whether they are real or humorous. I’ve always felt an affinity with Tauruses though, and sure enough he’s got library science listed under Taurus. Maybe my parents lied to me about my birthday? The author is a Taurus, so hopefully you will forgive him the oversight of using “dumb ox” and “library science” in the same profile.
I’m not really into video games, but this kind of gaming in the library looks like fun. There’s no location info–I assume Northfield only has one library, possibly with no windows? Jane you should go. 
This semester I am the Technical Services grad assistant at the St. Kate’s library. I’ve been spending Tuesday and Thursday mornings working on their digitization project, scanning old photos from the archives, writing descriptions, and encoding them with metadata. Today, I got to put a few into CONTENTdm and add them to the collection.
So for posterity, I give you…. The first photo I added to the College of St. Catherine’s Digital Collections:
Our Lady of Victory Chapel, Sodality Meeting, 1937
I also got a good chuckle out of Sister Barbara when I pointed at a small speck of black next to a pine tree in a photo and asked her, “Is this a Sister, or a tree? I think it’s a Sister, but I don’t want to embarrass myself. How sure should I be?” (It was a Sister.)
I know next to nothing about Catholicism or any building on campus other than the Coeur de Catherine, so it’s been fun / challenging. Plus I’m just a geek for pixels and metadata. The project is still pretty new, so hopefully I’ll be able to learn something useful to leave them with too. Regardless, I’m enjoying my first experience working in a library. If you are still in the program next year (it’s a winter semester assistantship), I recommend it.
Filed under: Uncategorized
My friend is teaching a course on emerging technologies in the scientific and technical communication field. Her class will be collaborating, building an informational site about the 35W bridge collapse using Web 2.0 applications. They are using del.icio.us to collect info and they also have about 200 government documents that are in the public domain. They plan to use Flickr to organize their images, and PB Wiki to host the site.
Where they are stuck, is finding a good way to organize the government documents so that they can point to them from the Wiki. (As I understand it, these documents are not already on the web.) The simplest thing to do could be to throw the docs up on my server and let them tag them in del.icio.us, but we were hoping to think of something a little more substantial. We probably don’t have time to put together a full fledged digital library, at least not this semester.
Anyone have any ideas?
