Week 7 - Podcasting and Online Video

I have a new "fave" soundbite regarding podcasts - they are "bespoke materials" captured for posterity!

This week's exercise was interesting and, as some have said, more frustrating than some others. I supposedly have high speed internet at my home but as luck would have it my connection speeds have been dropping to the point where I had to call the cable company out to take a look - they fixed my TV problems but my connectivity is still terrible. And guess what the first symptom was? Completely unable to use YouTube. At first I thought they might be "throttling" me, specifically restricting access to YouTube (like some businesses do). But looks like it was just a slow connection.

That aside, though, I think there are lots of potential uses for YouTube for libraries. I think brief tutorials, whether screenshot based or much more creative and fun (like the CommonCraft video series). While I think much bibliographic instruction is slow and plodding and way too detailed I think cutting things into little short snippets and making them available at the time of need makes excellent sense! I think podcasts could function in much the same way though they're less interesting in my book (on the other hand you may be willing to listen to a lecture, like in your car driving home or on public transportation, that you wouldn't be able to watch a video as easily or safely). The audio vs. video really depends on the content (and the audience's preferred learning style to some extent). There are also lots of neat things out there for us to point people to, even if we have no hand in their production. I really like SciVee.tv and the idea of people doing videos where they talk about their research. There are starting to be more and more useful educational and current awareness things that aren't just lecture capture, we could start helping people find and use them. And, of course, creating our own to fill in the gaps.

One issue I see is that many of these sites don't support browsing very well, they're set up more for searching. So its both a curse and a blessing - a pain in the arse to use but we could also do a great service by pulling out the good stuff and making it easier to find. Seems as though these sites view themselves more as repositories of content rather than sites to be used and navigated (ironically they have the same weakness I see in most library OPACs!). But having the content there and usable by anyone is fabulous, so I applaud them even as I cringe trying to find something other than a known item where there are unique terms to search on (like a person's name).

The one thing I have something of a dim view of (I know, always the curmudgeon) is overdoing the promotional angle with videos or podcasts. I think that putting your good works out there is promotion in and of itself, and trying "too hard" to promote your products or services (rather than letting them promote themselves) can lead to really cheesy experiences. And in the online environment we compete with all sorts of hip, sexy stuff so the last thing we need is something which makes us look slow, boring, stuffy - "the school play" in Edward Tufte-speak. Being earnest and sincere is fine, but much beyond that is the realm of advertising pros, which in my experience most librarians are not.

Only other comment - the initial video made some fun of the idea of sending things out on CD as that was old school. I'd submit that its actually not such a bad call, its just not the only way to do things. If you have a bunch of content burning it all to a CD (or letting people download it and burn their own) isn't such a bad idea. As you see from the comments this week (plus my home experience) the network isn't always as robust as it could be. A video site I'm involved with moved from streaming media to progressive downloads in part because of problems with network congestion and connectivity. Kinda reminds me of the old days (early 90's) when I'd download a postage stamp sized version of the Super Chicken or George of the Jungle opening credits from Apple - it took all day, but it was there waiting for me when I got home. Podcasting, in theory, works that way but I'm wondering if the YouTube model is starting to cause strain on the level of bandwidth people actually have access to reliably. And you compete with your neighbors for bandwidth in most environments. Don't get me started about Net Neutrality and other such issues. Point being, I guess, that much as I love the idea of web applications and connectivity anytime anywhere there is an issue when that network goes down. Reminds me of the mid-late 80s when I worked at a bank in Dayton and the computers that we needed were in Columbus - they swore that weather had nothing to do with it but every time there was a major storm the connection dropped and we couldn't get anything done. Until we have the robust networks of death everywhere, all the time, and they aren't subject to business or political interference perhaps the ability to have your own local copy of stuff isn't such a bad backup plan :-) Just make it available both or multiple ways...

Week 6 - Photo Sharing

Hmm, not bad! I signed up for a Flickr account sometime in 2006 but never really used it. I've used it to look for freely available stuff for design work and wound up there a lot via other people's blog posts (one of the things that really seemed to make some of my fave blogs work was the topical photo accompanying every post - now that's started to include YouTube and other videos too). So I've finally started uploading some of my own stuff in this exercise and its nice how easy it is!! Had some problems with Facebook but Flickr works great, and has some nice tools to let me use my iPhone as well as my laptop/desktop.

So how could this be used in the library? Well, for starters it could really improve our existing system for organizing and finding photos. We have a shared drive, and have some talented photographers and a pretty large back archive of images but the "organize by folder and image title" is a little weak. Whether we shared with the outside world or not the ability to tag things and use some of the incredible finding/organizing/playing with tools that people have created would be great. If we do share our stuff with the outside world that could help in terms of promotion or driving people to our library potentially (i.e. they stumble across us, are impressed by our inherent fabulousness and want to bask in the warm glow of it whether in person or online :-)

I'm involved with a number of websites, for our library and other professional groups, and the idea of putting them in a shared space like Flickr as well as on our site(s) makes lots of sense. You can create nice things like photo badges or rotating image elements, change things up frequently, etc. Like del.icio.us, it can also be a research or comparison tool, giving you ideas by looking at what people with similar interests/in similar markets are doing.

In terms of places like Facebook, while I had some technical glitches there I see that as serving one of the same functions as with blogs - giving more of a human face to an otherwise less cohesive or "real" community. Lots of online communities come to life with nothing more than ASCII text, but often it takes a human connection to push some people over a certain line in terms of trust, committment, whatever. If you don't have the opportunity to meet in person and cement that bond then photos can help alot, esp. if they are of the "fleshmeets" that others have had an opportunity to attend (whether informal or professional in nature). So while much of it can seem trivial it actually serves a very important social function (being a part-time professional humbug I've come to be convinced of the value of this, and smile and act nice when I see less than wonderful manifestations of this phenomenon :-)

Week 5 - Web Office Tools

OK, now I'm excited - does that make me a geek?

I stumbled across Google Docs awhile ago and immediately loved it - the idea and the implementation. Thanks for the links to the other office tool suites, though - Zoho in particular looks interesting and has some tools that Google doesn't offer yet so I may wind up using both. Or more, who knows!

I definitely think this is the future of most software products - some of the more computationally intensive things like video editing or the like will probably not work well enough as web apps for some time to come. And I do think there's a need to be able to do things offline (but Google Gears allows for this, and most of these web-based tools allow you to move stuff up and down between your local computer and the remote service - not always easily but that's getting better and better too). There are also issues with security and privacy - the more you share and store stuff remotely the more likely there could be problems (so I can see hospitals working with patient data, or anyone working with personnel data as two areas where there's not likely to be a web app solution anytime soon). The security and privacy issues also get worse when you think that maybe one company (like Google) might do the right thing but somewhere down the road be forced by the government to divulge data they said they'd keep confidential, or they might get bought out by a still Larger Company which doesn't do as good a job as the old one did but you don't get to do anything about it.

As someone who has tried to manage both an intranet and a shared drive with Novell the idea of a remotely stored set of documents and applications to get at them is manna from heaven. The only real issue is getting people up to speed on the concept and starting to use them in day to day work. For now they're used more for collaboration or as examples of what will be possible, but I hope to change that (myself and where I work). I'm still rather old school in that I take notes in a text editor and save them on my laptop, sharing in other formats when asked for something. A colleague has been using Docs for awhile now. I suspect before long I'll follow her lead but so far the idea of needing multiple people to access or share something hasn't been something so strong that its pushed me to make that change (and most of the people I collaborate with locally have been made aware of Google Docs but aren't yet willing to go there yet).

I'm really intrigued by something I heard about at Computers in Libraries which allows you to take web apps and sort of pull them out of the browser, almost turning them into desktop applications. I can't say why but I think when that's ready for prime time that will be the death knell for lots of shrinkwrapped software. Many people are already going to downloadable software and entertainment media as is - when there's not a big need to do the download part because you can fire up the web app and start working with the latest version right then and there it will be a wonderful day. There will still be people like me who like the physical media of, say, music CDs or movies on DVD, but for software I'd just love to be done with the whole muss and fuss of updating, installing, proving I own it, etc etc.

Week 4 - Social Bookmarking!

I've used del.icio.us a bit before, and played around with it more for the class. I do see some really good uses for it and the San Jose Public Library account is an example. I've also thought that it could be used as a way to replace some library link lists or pathfinders by making them more dynamic and using all the other people's stuff as a research tool. Bookmark and tag things, then feed that back into your website (or just send people to del.icio.us directly). Particularly with the browser bookmarklet tool its very easy to put stuff in there on the fly.

And there's the rub, at least for me. There's so much stuff out there, and I surf for myself, for my friends, for others at work who are working on similar stuff that I am, and at work for people doing totally unrelated things. Its almost as though I wish I had multiple accounts or personae so I could use a tag in different ways at different times. Of course I could come up with a series of "administrative" tags like "not safe for work" or "I mean this tag ironically" but then it gets even more confusing! So I have to admit that despite knowing about del.icio.us for some time, and liking the concept in theory, I haven't found a way to get to liking it in practice. I also have a laptop I carry almost everywhere, and use a bookmark syncing tool so I can keep different locations (like my home machine and the laptop) in sync.

So I find myself in the odd position (yet again) of being enthusiastic about and supportive of a tool I myself don't use :-) There are a number of Web 2.0 things that fall into this category, but its good to know about them in case I do suddenly come across a need for the tagging and sharing capabilities. I guess I also have to admit to being less social than most people which inhibits some of my enthusiasm - I curmudgeonly don't necessarily believe in the wisdom of crowds when it comes to recommending things. But its a great research tool, and I do like to share when I find out about awesome stuff. There's also the "change over time" issue - I imagine that because its very easy to put stuff into del.icio.us people do so with few reservations. But does anyone ever go back in and clean up stuff? I would imagine there's lots of old stuff floating around which doesn't get reviewed and so may not be so useful. I periodically go in and clean up bookmarks I have when they no longer work or I decide I don't want a resource anymore but I do wonder about the whole tragedy of the commons issue at 2.0 sites like del.icio.us.

Guess for now I'll keep it in the "neat idea" and "good research tool" category and see if I wind up using it more down the road. That's happened with lots of tech stuff, and likely will here too...