Month: March 2008

Cool Mashup

Down for everyone or just me? is a straightforward mashup that confirms whether or not a particular website is currently available. Here is a place to diagnose whether or not the inability to connect is limited to you.

Sometimes library customers at the public computer terminals ask if a particular site, such as Yahoo!, is down. Down for everyone or just me? is the ideal resource to check the customer’s site at the point of contact instead of walking back to the reference desk. This mashup may also be useful when assisting customers via telephone reference.

The website MashupAwards recently honored Down for everyone or just me? as a Mashup of the Day.

 

Play and Learn: Podcasts & Videos

The formerly text-based web has exploded into an audio-visual playground. Web content is bursting with images, graphics, sounds and videos. Sites that allow users to stream and/or download audio-visual content are rapidly expanding their offerings. I love that everyday users have the power to create and distribute content with ease. While I am comfortable locating, downloading and consuming online media content, I recently took the time to explore podcasts and videos in more depth.  

Podcasts

I have a very limited attention span for certain types of audio recordings. When driving, I greatly prefer loud music or the sounds of the open road to talk radio or audiobooks. Though not recently, I have listened to a number of podcasts over the last couple years, the most memorable being Google’s Plan Prompts a Question: What’s on the Web? from NPR regarding book digitization projects at Google and the Internet Archive.

I finally gave podcasts another chance. I checked out two podcasts, one professional and one personal. I listened to the Talking with Talis podcast with Diane Hillman on metadata and standards. I also listened to an episode of Sound Opinions, a rock and roll podcast by Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, on the South by Southwest Music Festival. Both were well-done and informative.

 

YouTube

 

YouTube is interesting. The video quality is poor, but the range of materials is incredible. This popular site also provides a way to reach a very large audience across the globe. I love that libraries and library consortiums now turn to YouTube without hesitation to market their services. Florida’s Ask a Librarian service has been promoted on YouTube through a commercial and a video contest for high school students, to name one example. For me, I have learned how to successfully post a YouTube video to this blog.

 

10 Ways Public Libraries Can Use Video

Today, the roles of creating, editing and sharing video content are being adopted by organizations in increasingly innovative ways. How might a public library use video content to further the library’s mission?

10 Ways Public Libraries Can Use Video

1. Film community leaders or sports figures reading their favorite children’s books and poems

2. Document the construction of a new library, including a groundbreaking ceremony, interviews with community members and library staff, and the opening day

3. Create a video tour of the library’s permanent art collection

4. Create video tutorials of specific resources and collections, including helpful search strategies (I especially love the MIT Libraries Video Tutorials)

5. Film a unique program offered by the library such as a storytelling festival or one on sign language for babies

6. Create a video tour of the main library

7. Assemble a short video highlighting a range of library resources on a specific topic (including databases, ebooks, print materials, and a reference librarian)

8. Create an action-packed video simply to market the library’s wealth of services and many happenings

9. Film a video-only program for busy adult customers 

10. Hold a contest similar to Ask a Librarian’s recent Director’s Chair contest and encourage local high school students to create videos promoting their branch library

Then, make the content available. Depending on the video, multiple venues may be appropriate for distributing the video. Ideas include posting on YouTube, allowing it to be downloaded or streamed from the library website, submitting it to local media for broadcast, and streaming the video from a laptop at local events.

Podscope

Podscope is a cool search engine for audio and visual content. This resource will locate podcasts and videos based upon the words contained within the content

Additionally, Podscope will allow you to submit information about your podcast to include in its index. Bonus! Here’s a place to locate others’ podcasts and videos as well as help them find yours.

New Look to Hillsborough County Website

Hillsborough County has redesigned the website!

Options to subscribe to various RSS feeds proliferate throughout the site. There is a fresh color scheme and new images on the page banner. I am especially glad to see that the “Employment” link has been relocated to the left frame of the homepage. 

Overall, the user-friendly design is sure to receive compliments as visitors to the website navigate the new interface.

Supernatural Superserious – R.E.M.

My longtime favorite band R.E.M. will release their album Accelerate on April 1. The first song to be released is “Supernatural Superserious” and here is the video:

The video was directed by Vincent Moon. 

Videos posted on YouTube tend to have mediocre to fair quality. If you liked this video, you may wish to check out the Supernatural Superserious website where versions of the video can be downloaded in high definition. Additionally, visitors are encouraged to create their own versions of the video and post them on the Supernatural Superserious page on YouTube.

R.E.M. also has an official YouTube channel available here.

How to Post a Video on Your Blog

Today I spent some time assisting a coworker on how to post a YouTube video onto her blog. She is using Blogger for her blog. This process was more complicated than we had anticipated.

The instructions given on both Blogger and YouTube indicated we could simply copy the code given in the “Embed” box. So, we thought we could just copy the code and paste it into a new blog post. This was not the case. We were unable to copy more than just the beginning portion of the code. (I checked later and found that users who choose to upload their videos to YouTube can prevent them from being embedded in others’ blogs. I’m not sure how common this is.)

After some trial and error, we ended up creating a YouTube account and adding a blog to the account. This allowed us to share the video from YouTube with her specific blog and thus post the video. If you find you cannot copy the code to embed the video, you may wish to follow the steps below to share the video instead.

 

How to Post a YouTube Video on Your Blogger Blog

 

1.  Locate a video from YouTube that you would like to post on your blog

 

2.  Sign up for a YouTube account here (complete the form even if using your Google account)

 

3.  Next, visit your new YouTube account page to add your blog to your YouTube account

 

4.  Click the link for “Video Posting Settings” and then click “Add”

 

5.  On the next page, choose Blogger and enter your Blogger username and password

 

6.  Return to the video that you have chosen

 

7.  Click on the option to “Share” below the video

 

8.  Select your blog from the assorted “Share” options

 

9.  You may change the title (the video title is default) and enter any text for your post

 

10. Click to share the post on your blog and it will be published immediately

 

 

For WordPress users, I found detailed instructions on how to post a YouTube video here.