NJLA2008: Practical Podcasting Preconference

Thanks to everyone who came out to the "Practical Podcasting" preconference session at the New Jersey Library Association conference today. There were a couple of technical issues, but hopefully everyone learned a little about podcasting and videocasting in libraries. Here are my slides, complete with the images that freaked out as a result of the PowerPoint crash. Additional information, including links to podcasts we discussed, is available on my wiki.

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The audio recording part went great. All of the "talent" and technical folks did a great job. I'll get the video finished and online tomorrow. Sorry again for the technical problems!

I had a blast talking to everyone today and I hope all the attendees had fun as well.

Library Podcast Podcast

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An NJLA preconference special!        

Greetings From New Jersey

I'm currently in chilly and damp Long Branch, New Jersey for the New Jersey Library Association Conference. I'm doing a preconference workshop on podcasting and videocasting this afternoon and a brief intro to said topics on a panel tomorrow. Watch the blog for slides, audio, and video from today's session.

Despite the nasty weather Jersey has been fun so far. I can see the ocean from my room and had a great dinner with Amy Kearns and a couple of her Jersey library friends last night. And I'm looking forward to the conference as well. Sarah Vowell is doing a keynote tomorrow!

CIL2008: The Dave and Dave Show - Results!

Today I had a nice Facebook message from Elizabeth Davis of the Lackawanna County (PA) Children's Library, one the CIL2008 graduates of the Dave and Dave Show. Otherwise known as Podcasting and Videocasting Bootcamp. She made this short video of a puppet show from her library as a test of videocasting to show her colleagues.



Elizabeth said they are going to hopefully be doing more with audio and video, so keep an eye out on their library blog.

If you are a past attendee and are also making audio and/or video content at your library now, let us know!

Publishers Sue Georgia State on Digital Reading Matter - New York Times

Just saw this article from the New York Times. Apparently Georgia State University, a former employer and alma mater, is being sued by publishers for alleged copyright violations related to digital course packs. Should be interesting to see how this plays out.

CIL 2008: Podcasting CyberTour

Thanks to the ridiculously large crowd that came out for the podcasting cybertour at CIL on Tuesday. I'm amazed and glad that so many folks took time out of their lunch to listen to me speak. I hope you all learned some useful information. Links to all of the resources, including featured audio and video podcasts, are available on the wiki page for the talk. And, as always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Here is the presentation, complete with a couple of additions we talked about but weren't included visually.

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Thanks again for coming, and I'm sorry for the delay in getting the slides online.

CIL 2008: When Web Calling, Video, and Libraries Collide

Char Booth, Ohio University. Article in upcoming Internet Reference Services Quarterly (13.2).

scalable web video/ calling library services are possible = point of talk. just because you can do it doesn't mean you have to. see if right for your community. informed experimentation is key.

evolution of electronic reference: email - chat - IM - web based IM - voice/video over IP/IM (iChat/Skype most popular)

what to use web calling for? video kiosks/ standalone reference/ distance ed/ professional activity

Some professors use Skype recording of classes etc as videocasts. {Pretty cool.} Very good and cheap for distance ed. Char uses in ed tech MA program for interaction w/ students in Ghana.

Started Skype kiosk to provide reference services to remote "scary" floors of library. Ended up moving it. Been in 2 locations and 3 different designs. Originally used Windows Live Messenger but switched to Skype. Skype is more stable for constantly open call, free, saves history, multiplatform, add extras, can text as well. Librarian on video all the time. People can walk by and see librarian. Pretty much the same thing as being on physical reference desk. Librarians had to get used to being on camera when working in office. Eventually changed to call-in model.

New version isn't live open call. Has links for floor plan, directory, hours, and ask a question. Disembodied head version got the most usage for some reason. Also have Skype as part of ask a lib service. Have to look at stats in relation to how many people use the technology says Jenny Levine.

No way to make eye contact Makes ref interaction weird. People don't move the camera in relation to their height. Tours gathered around the kiosk and were startled by librarians moving. "Librarian freaks in a box." Students would occasionally make out in front of camera. {Oh yeah. Exhibitionist paradise for 3-13 minutes.}

San Francisco State using similar tech to replace some service points. Good for providing services during renovation etc. Toledo Public Lib, U of Canterbury both using as well.

Don't use wireless connection for kiosk. Will crash and have to go fix often. Staff/ patron buy-in is essential to success. Make it voluntary perhaps.

DimDim lets you show slides and chat and such. Yugma is another screen push plug-in for presentations. Also has whiteboard and other features. Web calling build into Facebook - more students may be using in the future. How can libs use if they are using to talk to each other?

VoIP continues to improve and get more popular. Trend towards web calling over landline. Does take time to maintain and staff so have concrete purpose if you decide to use.

CIL 2008: Learning From Newspaper Publishing

Brian Kroski, New York Observer

{I'm going to try to go to a couple of the talks in the Beyond Libraries track today to hopefully get some good ideas for work. This talk and the Learning From Non-Profits talk this afternoon look particularly promising from the program. Never mind the non-profits. Canceled.}

Web presence of Observer a year ago was pretty basic. Not many visits, not many ad options. Just text of paper online. Now 1.5 million visits/ month and a lot more ads. Using lots of social tools (tags, RSS, etc) now. Better search (SEO, analytics). Providing online archives back to 1997, looking to do more.

Tech: Online pub system made up of core publishing system (open source, handles articles, blogs etc), 3rd party aps, external data feeds. Hosting LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, SQL). Use Drupal for CMS - articles, blogs, embedded media, taxonomy, feeds, publishing scheduling, content promotion. Ajax to pull latest headlines from blogs to display on homepage.

3rd party aps: google/ analytics, advert, blip.tv, brightcove (slideshows), kaango (classifieds).

They pull in externals feeds on movie box office in NYC, top B&N books in NYC by zipcode, Publishers Weekly feeds. Lots of social bookmarking and commenting to bring in "accidental readers" who get to site from recs from friends. Dynamic homepage for "loyal readers" - content changes 4 times per day. "seeker" somewhat regular readers, know what they want to find when come to site, interested in a couple of topics (need robust search, channels, multimedia). "Opportunist" are infrequent but regular readers who get 3 views (recent news, what editors think important (chosen by EIC), what other readers think important - most read/ commented etc).

Advertisers want targeted marketing, rich media, skins for ads, roadblocks. Very aggressive marketing of site - get word out as many was as possible, allow others to resuse content, not worried about making money off syndication.

Socialite Slapdown - March Madness for socialites, runs on Drupal. Green Channel is partnership w/ Columbia U to cover "green" issues in NYC. Lots of reporter. contributor created video (fashion advice show "Simon Says" syndicated on Blip/ YouTube).

Q&A stuff:
Don't require login to do anything on site including comment. Making people login to comment meant no comments. Struggle w/ spam, but better interaction. Use spam filters to try to handle - filter out URLs but don't filter "naughty" words.

Rich web didn't hurt print subscriptions at all, actually grown print subs after web development. At minimum didn't hurt print, greatly improved paper all the way around.

Move towards more community based online presence instead of traditional publishing. Publisher as community builder in 2.0 world.

CIL 2008: Podcasting and Videocasting Bootcamp

Thanks to everyone who came to the Podcasting and Videocasting Bootcamp program this AM. David Lee King and I had a blast. I didn't take any still pictures, but here is it in brief video form.



Make sure to check out the audio podcast as well. Sorry for the lack of paper handouts for my part. I promise I really did send them in. Really. I did. But here is the presentation and you can download it from SlideShare.

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4/7 Update: The URL for the Princeton Poetry Podcasts in the slide show is incorrect. It should be http://pplpoetpodcast2008.wordpress.com/. My humbly apologies to the super cool folks at the Princeton PL.

Additional info, including linkage is on my wiki. Thank again for coming. I'm doing a podcasting cybertour at 12:30 (I think) on Tuesday and then the awesome Pecha Kucha later that day. Come say howdy.

CIL 2008 PODCAST

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PODCAST @ CIL PRE-CONFERENCE

Happy (Late) Blogoversary To Me

In the midst of prepping for CIL and working on a bunch of projects at work I completely missed my 2nd blogoversary, which was March 28. Yeah, there are a few posts from 2004, but I don't really count those. My actually involvement in blogging starting at CIL 2006 when I was semi-peer pressured into it by Meredith Farkas and Greg Schwartz. Well, it wasn't really peer pressure as much as pointing out that my excuses for not doing so were pretty lame.

And it has been really fun! I've been pretty erratic in posting over the past 6 to 8 months due to relocating and new job and such. And figuring out how I was going to approach maintaining something that is nominally a library-related blog when I'm not working in a library anymore. But what I'm doing now works for me, although I am going to try to write more about publishing type issues. I'm not really sure that my blog is even semi-useful anymore to anyone in libraryland who doesn't know me personally, but it is still a fun exercise.

Speaking of Greg Schwartz, I'm pretty excited that he is blogging regularly again and back on the speaking circuit and has Unvocab going strong. I can pretty much trace all of my involvement in conference speaking, and things that have resulted from it including my current job, to him. And honestly, I've felt like the stand-in or D-List Greg the whole time. I get really uncomfortable when anyone implies that I'm some sort of podcasting expert because, as LiB pointed out recently, he is The Man when it comes to library podcasting.

So thanks for reading, and I hope to catch up with old friends (and make some new ones) at CIL.

Princeton PL Poerty Podcasts

Just in time for National Poetry Month (and CIL presentations), I had an email from Janie Hermann of Library Garden fame today letting me know that the Princeton N.J. Public Library is reprising their most excellent Poetry Podcast Blog. The content will be 60% poems from poets who didn't get a change to participate last year and 40% returning poets with new readings.

There were some great readings last year, so this is definitely worth adding to your podcatcher as new podcasts are released everyday. And a great use of podcasting in general.

Lets Play Two

Yes, let's do that. So on Monday a statue honoring Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, was unveiled on the corner of Clark and Addison here in still remarkably frigid Chicago, Illinois. You would think someone would have proofread the freaking thing.


From the artist comes the best quote ever - "I'm the sculptor, I'm not a writer." Indeed. This one goes out to all the grammar/ punctuation snobs. You know who you are.