Context and Continuity

The PLCMC Learning 2.0 experience has been good. I think I caught some of the first glimps of it in the excitement of Computers in Libraries earlier this year in Washington D.C.

I hope Learning 2.0 does not stop with the completion of the 23 Things. I would like to see one new discovery activity every week on an on-going basis, at least for the next 6 months or so. Sure, other incentives would be nice, but it could be something like a chance at a few extra hours of vacation, or some free rentals. A little goes a long way in enticing people to do something as interesting as Learning 2.0.

However, I have been challenged thinking about how some of the Web 2.0 technologies could be made meaningful or relevant to library patrons, unless they specifically asked staff, "How do I get an RSS aggregator?" or "How do I set up a blog?" The patrons who want these services probably have the tech-savvy to go get them.

For me, I really liked the concept of tagging, and the websites that tagged concept like Flickr, YouTube, and Library Thing made a lot of sense to me. On the other hand, I am not a devoted reader of blogs, yet, but who knows what the future will hold.

netLibrary

netLibrary is not a new resourse to me. The Bizlink team has incorporated netLibrary Business titles into that website for several years now. Incorporating links into audio business content was a natural thing to do as soon as that collection became available.

I have always believed that netLibrary did a wonderful job at supplementing PLCMC's collection, and I hope we continue to add content, not only relying on NCLive, but with our own resources as well.

While you know I claim to be a visual learner, learning from audio content is completely valid. I have been trying to learn my patriarchial line's mother tongue, Croatian, all my life. I have tapes at home, but all I picked up over the years was a few phrases. The netLibrary collection includes a Pimsleur Language Program on Croatian that I would like to try.

I am still not completely clear on how to acquire a license so that I can put this content on my MP3 player, once I get it, but I will just ask the experts here at PLCMC at that time.

Audio vs. Video podcasts

I am a very visual learner. I know others have learning styles where they can just read or listen. So as I was trying to get my mind around podcasts, I tried to sample the content in both audio and video podcasts.

Just the idea of presenting information as a series, rather than stand-alone incidents like in YouTube, seems fundamentally like it would be more useful in a library setting for information dissemination. Obviously tagging any of this media makes it more accessible, but I believe that designing content in a series would be ideal.

Adding podcasts into my Bloglines account was very easy, so I can now be made aware of new content is these series. Even links to preview podcast content were listed beautifully there.

However, launching some content was problematic. I do not seem to have a Quicktime viewer on my library workroom PC. Thankfully, I could view the most current podcast on CaliYoga.com, as it was embedded into the website page. However, I was disappointed that I could not launch preview podcasts, since they were in Quicktime *.m4v format.

Also, I noticed that some podcast directories were better than others. Yahoo Podcasts was by far superior to Podcastalley and Podcast.net in terms of the interface and the detailed information provided about each podcast. It's no trivial matter to me whether a podcast is 2 minutes long vs. a half hour, and depending on my search, I want to know that at first glance, without having to click deeper into my search results.

MeebO@PLCMC?

We have a fledgling project for intergrating chat as a reference service at PLCMC, so I took advantage of this Learning 2.0 exercise to look at meebo




So now my question is, can we embed this code on the PLCMC website?

YouTube: An Addiction Just Waiting to Happen

Everyone wants to be entertained. I spent an hour and a half at home this morning mindlessly cruising YouTube.

I really like YouTube. I feel about it now like I felt about surfing websites about 7-8 years ago. For instance, I can entertain myself for hours watching videos of other people's corgis. I have 3.



Can I imagine a practice library use? Sure. I think short instructional videos of homegrown content would be easy to incorporate on PLCMC's website.

For instance, I co-host a bi-monthly Stitch-In at Main Library. Here's a simple demostration of knitting.




I tried to blog straight from YouTube, and for some technical reason that did not really work out for me. It would probably work better for me at home.