YouTube review of library video

My favorite YouTube video that I found when searching for libraries was “The Adventures of Super Librarian,” a short publicity type video for the McCracken County (KY) Public Library. I liked the fact that it was short and hit only the highlights of services, while keeping the whole message light and fun. The Librarian was dressed as Superman/woman, breaking the traditional stereotype of a bun haired older lady shushing everyone.

Another video that I found relating to academic libraries was “The Otis Library Tour,” a tour and informational video about the Millard Sheets Library at the Otis College of Art & Design. This video had fast, upbeat music and a lot of humor, yet it quickly conveyed some of the great services available in the library. The video ran through each of the areas of the library while highlighting the staff at each location. It is a small library, but they did a great job of showcasing it, such as the laptop lounge where the patron was able to rearrange the furniture. They also made the staff seem extremely friendly and eager to help – not everyone can do a back flip over the Circ desk to assist a patron, but they all conveyed an inviting image of the library workers in order to encourage student interaction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS28qydjfsg

I think the YouTube format would be a great publicity tool for libraries, and maybe a short educational video would work as well. However, I think the short videos are better at capturing the attention of our college-age patrons. I’m a librarian and I got bored and quit watching a lot of them!

Podcasting - not so fun

So, it's taken me over a week to get the podcasting assignment completed. I had to download the Audacity software to make the recording, and then I had to find a software program to convert my file to MP3 format -- there seemed to be a lot in google, but I chose AceZ Mp3 Wav Converter and it worked great.

In general I found the whole podcasting experience to be a bit complicated, and am still pondering how one might use a podcast for their library. I'm sure there ARE lots of good uses, but I'm more of a visual learner, and I've been a YouTube fan for a long time.

The biggest problem that I had in this assignment was trying to find out how/where to post my podcast. Then I saw on our Blue 2.o blog that Bunheadky kindly offered us a couple of options. (Thanks Bunhead!) I chose to go with podbean. I was able to post my podcast, but am still trying to learn all the tricks and options of podbean -- it essentially creates a blog for you to post your mp3 files to then act as a podcasting host. There are lots of options for changing the look of my page, but I haven't had time to figure them out yet. At any rate, here's the URL to my podcast http://lmcdavison.podbean.com

Flickr

Flickr is great! It was very easy to create a free account, and they give you lots of space for posting photos. I also like that the site is so user friendly, it uploads your photos quickly and makes it easy to manipulate your collection. I think this would be a really great publicity venue for libraries -- especially for special events that you want to publicize, or even for a photo tour of your library. If remodeling or building a new library, the fact that anyone can access the photos without having an account would be another fantastic way to show the world what's going on at your library.

My flickr account is located at the following URL
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lcdavison

twitter try 2

Over the weekend, I was able to get my twitter account setup http://twitter.com/lcdavison and I managed to add a co-worker as another twitter-er to follow. I also added "I Can Haz Cheezburger" to follow, and of course I LOVED it due to all of the cat photos!

I think the idea of Twitter is interesting, but not really sure how it would be an effective communication tool for work. But as Sarah commented in the post below there seem to be a lot of technical difficulties with Twitter so far. I think it just isn't "cooked" yet.

weeme - weeks 7 & 8

Since I had difficulties with Twitter timing out yesterday, I decided to create an avatar. First I used Mr. Picassohead, which I really liked and made an all blue, abstract avatar. The problem is I can't figure out how to save a copy to use as my blog profile picture. I can go to Mr. Picassohead and look at it, but not save it :-(
http://www.mrpicassohead.com/canvas.html?id=8d7f98b&skin=original

Then, I decided to try the WeeMe app, and made an odd avatar in bunny slippers which I have now loaded as my blog's profile photo! This was fun. I think that I'll put the WeeMe on my Facebook page too.

Play Week, application #2

So the second app that I decided to play with was Twitter. I heard about microblogging at the MLA webcast on Web 2.0 yesterday, and didn't really get it -- so I thought that would be a good choice for play week! Hummmm, not going so well -- I created an account with no problems, but having trouble adding contacts. My computer is extremely slow, so I'm thinking it might be a "timing out" problem. I'll keep working on it.

Play Week - online image generator

So this assignment is to play with some of the various options our kind Blue 2.0 instructors have listed. The first one I tried was "Free Online Image Maker." Interesting, but since I know very little about editing photos it wasn't too helpful to me. It was very easy to load a photo though, and if I knew much about photography it's great that the tools are there online (and free!). So then I went to Photo Spread Effect Generator, and did this.