A few thoughts and where to go from here

This has been a worthwhile experience and I enjoyed doing it. I highly recommend this training for all staff--certainly for all Info staff. There were some rough areas where links were broken and sites were no longer accessible, my sandbox experience being one of them, which could be a little frustrating. Although much was not new to me, Technorati, Del.icio.us and Rollyo were definitely new, and I may find a future use for them. The Online Image Generator was also new but I think I'll skip that one for now. Maybe I'll recommend it to my nieces and nephews to play around with. I also discovered how easy it was to add a film clip to a blog and will definitely have a use for that. I re-visited LibraryThing after a long absence and may use it, not so much for listing my own books, but for the other information on the site. RSS I'll skip for the time being as I am information overloaded as it is. (I have a Twitter account that I never look at, and used to have RSS feeds on my old Yahoo account that I never had time to read.) On the other hand, I have unearthed an old ipod and will give downloading podcasts another try.

Downloadable e-books, e-audio books

Since I was somewhat familiar with Overdrive (Maryland's Digital eLibrary Consortium) and NetLibrary through our systems databases, I decided to look at Project Gutenberg , which I'd heard much about many years ago but never really paid much attention to. A rather boring interface to start, but easy enough to navigate. Though once known for their print format, they have now added "human-read" audio-books. I was amazed at some of the languages available, beginning with Afrikaans. Since most titles are public domaine the collection is a little musty, though.

In terms of print materials, I probably should be paying more attention to Google/Amazon and the big hullabaloo the other day in Europe with European publishers,and national libraries, particularly French ones, or perhaps it's just the French government which is opposed to the idea. I think the Bibliotheque Nationale actually wants their books digitalized and to be a part of the program.

Podcasts

The Yahoo Podcasts link listed no longer worked so I continued on to Podcast.net which didn't work either. Podcast alley was still up and working so I looked at it. I searched for "Radio France Internationale" in search for a podcast and pulled up a weird assortment of things. I used to listen to podcasts of Radio France International somewhat regularly until my niece detroyed my mp3 player. I have not replaced it but a link for subscribing is: http://www.rfi.fr/radiofr/podcast/trancheMonde.asp after installing the software, located at http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/072/article_40499.asp. Of course I can just listen through my computer but the portability of the mp3 player was the plus. If I am going to use my computer for this purpose, I'd prefer to listen live.

I also don't think I would normally do a search for podcasts, but if I discovered that a site I was interested in had a podcast, I might subscribe. I don't know if others feel the same way I do, but that would be my likely approach.

I looked at the links for learning podcasting but none worked except "How to Podcast" which was good if you really wanted to create one but much more information than I wanted so I ended up skimming the latter half of the article. The suggestion of "recording in your closet because clothes dampen the sound" cracked me up, however.

YouTube

I looked at this site a couple of years ago when I was wondering about the possibility of teens putting together a library video for us. I thought it would be great way of getting teens involved in libraries and a way of advertising our services. I remember looking at numerous library videos--some of them very funny--and was amazed at how many there were.

For fun I checked out some dachshund videos since I have two of them myself--and they can be such clowns. I've attached a doxie video bar to this blog.

I also watched a talking heads video from the library department of the University of Brighton. There Juliet Eve, with a background in public libraries, discussed what she considered the hype of Libraries 2.0 saying that we need to rethink the what and why of 2.0--how it is not necessarily something radically new and different, and does not address all needs such as the need of physical space. As a case in particular. she mentioned the dearth of places for young people to congregate, and and said libraries should take advantage of this space need too. We shouldn't put all of our eggs in the technological basket, so to speak. Although the video was created over a year ago, it was interesting to hear her comment how an older generation is rapidly catching up on certain technologies, notably Facebook--exactly my experience.


I guess I don't normally go to this site to look up videos, but when I hear of a good one I appreciate the link to YouTube where I can view it. This one, taken from Yahoo! videos, from the site Whatsnewinlibraries.org on the subject of podcasts is pretty lame.

Hot Buttery Podcasts - Longshots from Library Beat on Vimeo.