March 2007
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Month March 2007

Entries 10 Total

Audiobooks and Access to Information for Canadians with Print Disabilities

Mar 30, ’07 9:18 AM

Flickr user American Graffiti (Shannon LaBelle) FlickrMailed me to ask permission to use a picture of some talking books I took. Little did I know it would end up in such a nice looking presentation.

I love seeing flickr listed in her references

Rogers, C.R. (Dr.) (2006, June 22). Record Player [1952 model]. Flickr. Retrieved March 13, 2007, from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/curtisrogers/sets/72157594173424379/

Image used with permission. Dr. Curtis R. Rogers works at South Carolina State Library.

Rogers, C.R. (Dr.) (2006, June 22). Talking Book Cassette Player. Flickr. Retrieved March 13, 2007, from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/curtisrogers/sets/72157594173424379/

Image used with permission.

Schmidt, A. (2006, December 5). Talking Books! [Oregon State Library]. Flickr. Retrieved March 12, 2007, from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronschmidt/sets/72157594407498348/

Image used with permission. To visit Aaron Schmidt’s personal web site, go to: http://www.walkingpaper.org

Comments (3)

lego sofa~

Mar 30, ’07 9:05 AM

Wouldn’t this look great in a YA or YS department? 350€ from Italy.

[via]

Comments (2)

stop disasters!

Mar 20, ’07 8:35 PM

No, not your hair on a Monday morning. Natural disasters! If you have some time to spare, check out Stop Disasters which is a joint project of the UN and International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

stop disasters

Each scenario is a different location with a specific natural hazard against which you must protect a village or town. The game does a great job of educating the player about making good decisions regarding fortifying the environment without being boring or dry. Another solid explicitly educational game to add to the list I put together at my post “quick educational gaming links.” No, maybe not as addictive as line rider, but still fun.

Comments (6)

if you must have signs about noise in the library…

Mar 20, ’07 8:23 PM

…make them like this. Clever, humorous, and polite. Signs like this are the best because there’s added value. The reader takes something else away from the sign other than the primary message.

best.library.sign.evar

Kudos to Rochelle for the inspired sign. See her post “Library Flyer: It goes to 11″ for her take, and a link to a Word document that you can download to have your very own template to alter! And importantly, are there really enough Bears fans in Wisconsin to argue loudly with Packers fans?

Comments (2)

don’t use this as a training video

Mar 17, ’07 9:41 AM

Here’s a goofy German car advert that takes place in a library, posted partially because it is slightly funny and partially because the librarian is so damn mean. How’d we get that reputation?

Comments (0)

don't use this as a training video

Mar 17, ’07 9:41 AM

Here’s a goofy German car advert that takes place in a library, posted partially because it is slightly funny and partially because the librarian is so damn mean. How’d we get that reputation?

Comments (0)

multnomah county OPAC gets RSS

Mar 16, ’07 9:57 AM

Imagine my surprise earlier this week when I went to the Multnomah County Library Catalog and found a big, bright orange RSS icon.

MCL RSS

They’ve rolled out III’s RSS product, and have 15 feeds coming out of the catalog:

  • Audiobooks,
  • Children’s fiction
  • Cookbooks
  • DVDs
  • Fiction
  • Gardening books
  • Graphic novels
  • Music
  • Mysteries
  • Non fiction
  • Science fiction
  • Teen fiction
  • Teen graphic novels
  • Travel books
  • Picture books/ easy readers

I subscribed to a half-dozen feeds in Bloglines to see how many subscribers are listed (not that this figure is the be all, end all) and found that DVDs is the most popular feed with 34 subscribers. Other feeds have 4-10 subscribers.

I like that they are promoting their RSS feeds in a prominent place. I also like the nice What is RSS? page they’ve put together.

Gripes? Ideally patrons would be able to create their own feeds for specific searches (like aadl.org) but, to my knowledge, this isn’t a feature available from III. I’m guessing that most “2.0″ solutions coming from vendors will be watered down like this. I’d be more than willing to eat my words though!

Having the feeds available is a great first step, and I hope to see MCL take further action integrating the library into the community by helping other organizations get feeds displayed on their websites.

Comments (4)

hennepin county library’s bookspace

Mar 13, ’07 8:32 PM

The ever resourceful Librarian in Black breaks a huge story about hennepin county library’s bookspace which is an online community based around books. I’m going to copy her list of things readers can do at bookspace:

* create their own account for Book Space
* sign up for e-mail alerts on new books
* get daily book excerpts via e-mail
* listen to audio eBooks
* create book lists
* browse subjects and genres to find good books
* get e-mail and RSS feed updates on new books
* post comments about what they’re reading
* find book events and book clubs
* sign up for Book Space eNews

hennepin's bookspace

This site approaches a hypothetical/magical/mystical/unrealized library website I often describe in my presentations about social software in libraries. I don’t want to detract from just how neat the site is, but I see one glaring missing feature: user profiles. It is a bit difficult to have a community without meaningful interaction, and it is difficult to have meaningful interaction without people. Here’s a screenshot of what happens when you click through someone’s username:

It is great to see all of the booklists the user has created, but I was hoping to see a user’s “homepage” in the community. You know, a space for a picture, a place for conversations, all of that stuff.

One other thing I noticed is that the site isn’t limited to HCPL patrons. I’m sure this was a deliberate choice, and it was the right one. It isn’t my site, but I’m still going to encourage you to get an account and see how more of our sites should be featured.

Comments (3)

hennepin county library's bookspace

Mar 13, ’07 8:32 PM

The ever resourceful Librarian in Black breaks a huge story about hennepin county library’s bookspace which is an online community based around books. I’m going to copy her list of things readers can do at bookspace:

* create their own account for Book Space
* sign up for e-mail alerts on new books
* get daily book excerpts via e-mail
* listen to audio eBooks
* create book lists
* browse subjects and genres to find good books
* get e-mail and RSS feed updates on new books
* post comments about what they’re reading
* find book events and book clubs
* sign up for Book Space eNews

hennepin's bookspace

This site approaches a hypothetical/magical/mystical/unrealized library website I often describe in my presentations about social software in libraries. I don’t want to detract from just how neat the site is, but I see one glaring missing feature: user profiles. It is a bit difficult to have a community without meaningful interaction, and it is difficult to have meaningful interaction without people. Here’s a screenshot of what happens when you click through someone’s username:

It is great to see all of the booklists the user has created, but I was hoping to see a user’s “homepage” in the community. You know, a space for a picture, a place for conversations, all of that stuff.

One other thing I noticed is that the site isn’t limited to HCPL patrons. I’m sure this was a deliberate choice, and it was the right one. It isn’t my site, but I’m still going to encourage you to get an account and see how more of our sites should be featured.

Comments (3)

new (to me?) last.fm feature

Mar 13, ’07 10:27 AM

Embedding songs:

Guess they released this functionality last month. Some songs are full length, some are a 30 second clip.

Also, will anyone tell me if they see posts from this site in bloglines? I sure don’t!

Comments (6)