Celebrate Healthy Vision Month this May
More than 11 million Americans have uncorrected vision problems such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and/or presbyopia and can benefit from the use of corrective eyewear such as glasses or contact lenses. The National Eye Institute (NEI) has created a Healthy Eyes Toolkit for Healthy Vision Month, which aids in raising awareness about the importance of eye exams in detecting common vision problems. This toolkit contains electronic resources, downloadable resources, educational programs, and much more. The toolkit is available online at http://www.nei.nih.gov/healthyeyestoolkit/e_resources.asp.
Healthy Vision Month was established in 2003 by NEI to elevate vision as a health priority and to promote the Healthy People 2010 vision objectives. Healthy People 2010 (www.healthypeople.gov), the prevention framework of the Nation, identifies the most significant risks to health and establishes national goals to reduce those risks.
Screencasting Using Jing
Screencasting has become a useful tool when it comes to creating online tutorials by allowing users to capture any given computer screen and add multimedia features.
The Jing Project provides an
always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere, at no charge.
In addition to recording video with audio, it allows users to take photos of any portion of your desktop and draw on it, add text, and immediately upload, save or copy. Jing also provides a unique URL that you can then use to share the image or video and is compatible with both Macs and Windows machines.
Please visit the Jing Project website at www.jingproject.com for additional information or to download for free.
MLA is providing short courses on emerging online tools, which can be viewed on the Dip Deeper with Social Media blog at: http://sns.mlanet.org/snsce_advanced. This week’s assignment was to use Jing and create our vey own tutorial. Here is my attempt at screencasting using nothing more–or less–than Jing and an old computer mic:
This was a fun experience, although making it through one cut without making a mistake was very difficult. This is one of the major faults with Jing’s free version. Although you can pause a recording–which has a slight delay–there is no way to edit more than one clip togeather. This however, seem very minor when compared to the overall usefullness and user-friendliness of this product. So go ahead and give it a try!
All Mashed Up
For this week’s assignment, we had to choose a Mashup and write about it. After exploring the ProgrammableWeb website, I found the Mashup StadiumHunt.com, which basically does what the title says, it finds you a stadium.
StadiumHunt.com I think is a good example of the basic elemets needed to make a Mashup; it combines Google Maps with Stadium info.
Stadium Hunt provides satellite images, ticket information and directions for hundreds of stadiums across the United States.
This site is easy to navigate, in that, stadiums are placed into categories based on sports, which are tabbed at the top of the page. After choosing a sport, you then pick a team and you’ll find the stadium where they play! Here you’ll find useful information including the Stadium’s address, telephone number and it even provided images, including pictures of the stadiums and nearby area (s). In addition, you can also find ticket information and nearby points of interest. The only drawback for me when exploring this page was that the Google adds are located on the top of the page, meaning you need to scroll down to see your results. As a user of the site, I would prefer to see these adds to the site or at the bottom of the page.
Next, I visited the Rollyo page and searched Librarianblogs by Gabe on “privacy”, which yielded some neat results. What the site does is search all of the blogs that are included in the Librarianblogs Searchroll and gave me results only from these pages. This is definitely a neat site if you know what webpage you want to search!
Podcasting and YouTube
Q: Write a blog entry discussing how you felt about the experience of using YouTube and what you think about this service. Do you see any potential uses for Podcasting in the library? If so what and why?
I had the opportunity to attend CIL 2008 (Computers in libraries), which hosted it’s second Annual InfoTubey Awards. These were some really great and funny videos showing how libraries can reach out to patrons using videos:
- The University of Ottawa’s Morisset Library for their video The Amazing Library 101 Challenge.
- The DePauw University Libraries for their video Visual Resource Center: Introduction
- The Monroe County Library System for their video MCLS Year of the Teen.
- QandANJ.org for their video Now Your Library is Open Late Night Too!. My Favorite!!!
- Allen County Public Library for their video Library Zombies.
Libraries should and are experimenting with using YouTube to reach out to patrons. My experience using YouTube has been positive and informative. There are millions of people using YouTube and libraries should definitely take advantage of that. It’s a new way to reach patrons that you might not be able to traditionally.
Our midweek question asks: Imagine posting instructional library videos on YouTube. Now imagine you have many instructional videos. So you make a channel and your patrons can subscribe to these videos and receive them as they are made. Is this a viable use or still fluff? Even if it is not fluff, is the video quality good enough for instruction?
I’d have to say that it is a viable resource, because your reaching out and providing services to patrons in a way that might best fit their needs. They could be used to reinforce what was taught in the class. Plus, maybe I’m a student and I can’t find time to make one the classes taught during lunch break. Well, you’ve just provided me with an easy and convenient alternative. As for video quality, I was always taught that you should never judge a book by its cover. I don’t think that video quality is as big an issue as the content! Sure, I’m the first to criticize bad video quality, but I think we’ll all agree that if it’s boring we’re most likely going to move on to something else.
Similar to videocasting, podcasting has a number of potentially beneficial uses in the library. I’d be willing to bet $100 that almost everyone has some sort of a digital music player aka iPod. Why not take advantage of this and provide patrons with another resource. The great thing about podcasting is that you don’t necessarily have to podcast about the library. There are a number of library podcasts out there that talk about other stuff. For example, they interview authors, professors, the student body, etc. In a medical library, perhaps interviewing or having medical staff talk about exciting studies or new findings can be of interest. They talk about current events, exibits, and just about anything you can think of.
Making videos and podcasts require lots of time and testing! Trust me, I’ve tried it. It’s fun and at times frustrating….but at the end of the day, if we can come up with something that will help a patron realize that we are here to help and want to part of the “cool” new technologies out there, than it’s definitely worth every minute spent doing it or at least trying it.
Photo Sharing via Picasa
This week’s assignment is one of my favorites. Although, I’ve used Flickr, I’m a BIG fan of Google’s Picasa and have been using it for a few years now. It’s great! The photo editing is simple and does just what I need it to. The best part is the “I’m feeling lucky” button, which takes all of the hastle out of editing pictures. It resolves color and makes some of my really “bad” looking photos look pretty good!
Not to mention the Web Albums features, which I am currently using 83% of the storage space provided. Basically, you can upload your photos from Picasa to your Web Album and have access anytime, anywhere! Plus, you can even upload videos, although at present you can not share them. But with photos you can share them via email, add captions, order prints and even embed them into sides in a slide-show.
Facebook not only has a Flickr application, but they also have a Picasa Web Album app (which I just discovered), which allows users to have their public albums displayed.
Online Photo Sharing is a terrific way for libraries to easily incorporate web 2.0, because it’s in my opinion one of the easiest to do. Libraries can take pictures during programs, events, and other occasions to give the library a “face” and show what’s going on. The Library of Congress Flickr page is a terrific example, in that, its collection was introduced to number of people that probably were unaware of resources available. At my library, we have found photo sharing to be useful because it allows us to share with our members what’s going on and what we’re doing. This helpful in library PR and giving patrons that cannot attend events an opportunity to see what happened.
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
and here’s a few of mine
Web Office Tools
Q: Is this the future of all software products? What do you think?
I think this could quit possibly be the future of office products. Google Docs is intuitive, easy to use and has many features which allow you to customize your projects….from presentations to spreadsheets and more. Traditional office products don’t allow you the same freedom, in the sense that you can instantly collaborate with people using Google Docs and just as easily share them, whether by email or by posting on a blog.
Although, I have been usucessfull in posting my Google Doc Presentation into my wordpress blog using the the embedding <iframe> code provided.
I also explored the other office tools provided, including Zoho Web-based Office Suite and found that I liked Google Docs better.
Bookmarking via del.icio.us
Q: Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?
A: del.icous.us is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to store bookmarks-of anything and everything-all in one place accessible online from anywhere! It can be useful as a research tool for an individual and even as part of a class, because anything you bookmark-articles, blogs, reviews, etc.- can easily be shared with anyone. Users also have the ability to tag bookmarks, which allows you the freedom to use words that are meaningful to you. This can be a downfall however because what I might use as a tag for something, may not necessarily be used by someone else.
I can easily see this tool being used collaboratively, as you can create a shared account or create networks to gather and share bookmarks that the entire group can use.
Social Networking Tools
Q: Blog about your impressions and experiences with social networking. You may want to consider some or all of the following questions.
I have used Facebook prior to this exercise and think that it is one of the 
most fun and useful tools of social networking. At first, it is a bit confusing to navigate through and figure out how to use the applications and other features, but once you get the hang out it, it’s great! I was able to find friends from high-school and college that I lost touch with and instantly get re-connected. It’s conveient, borderless and allows you to easily keep in touch with people.
- How can social networking be used by MLA to connect members
Social Networking CAN be used by MLA to connect members. Like the exercise demonstrated, by using Facebook, we were all able to learn about an event and join in. Social networking applications like Facebook can be used to allow members to communicate with one-another, possibly as an alternative to the traditional listserv because it is more personalized.
- Should your library have a Facebook or MySpace page?
I think that depends on your patrons. In the exercise, I added the PubMed and Worldcat search applications and tested them. Although they are both useful applications because they allow direct access to the catalogs, I do think they are limited. The reason-unless users are on Facebook all the time, it probably easier to just visit the individual website for this information?
- Are there privacy concerns for individuals when using social networking sites.
I think there are privacy concerns that one should consider prior to joining Facebook, MySpace, linkedin, etc. Facebook, for example displays your name, birthday, hometown, place of employment, etc. I’ve heard many people voice concern over all of this information being easily accessible-especially in light of the identity theft. But, like this exercise has demonstrated you can still participate without really saying who you are or even answering all of these questions. You have the option to socially network at your own COMFORT LEVEL.
Facebook does take into consideration your privacy and clearly lets the user control that level. For example, you set your profile so that the most anyone can do is see your profile picture, name and your friends.
TESTING
Wikis vs. Blogs
Q: What is the difference between a blog and a wiki? What sort of things might be better suited for a blog and better suited for a wiki?
A: There are a number of differences between a wiki and a blog. The biggest difference to me is the general nature of the two. A blog contains individual posts that are (usually) listed according to date that become static and archived. Although you can have more than one contributor to a blog, collaboration is difficult because you cannot easily change a post. Rather, individual posts are displayed by the individual contributors. And forget about collaboration-unless your the blogger the most you can do is post a comment-if that. With a wiki, you can allow anyone to jump in and add and/or delete content and pages!
Another important difference is the fact that when using a wiki, users can create a number of pages linked together by the home page. Although a blog allows you to link to external pages and embed widgets, it does not let you create numerous pages.
Based on these differences there are uses more suitable for a blog and wiki. Blogs are most likely best suited for individual authoring, announcements, news, etc. Perfect example-this and my classmates blogs! A wiki on the other hand, is probably best suited for collaborative projects and information that is changing and robust.
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