The Hi-Def Librarian

Overdrive and MP3s: Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

2008-11-13T17:20:00.004-05:00

Yoy and double yoy! My major Midwest library got the word today: iTunes and Overdrive just don't play nicely together. iTune's auto synch function must be disabled to successfully download MP3s onto an iPod.

Now I face a stark decision: do I manually synch my iPod from this day forward, or do I give up on my library's creamy MP3 goodness? It's the most important decision in my lifetime... with the possible exception of Obama v. McCain. OK, maybe not that important. But I gotta play around with it for a while so I can explain it clearly to customers.

Thing #23: Closing Arguments

2008-11-08T13:05:00.007-05:00

Learn & Play has been quite a ride!

It was fun. Thing #5 Flickr was the #1 cool Thing, followed by Thing #10, online image generators (I can see myself playing around with those a lot .
It was educational. I've gained a new appreciation for the depth and variety of Web 2.0 technologies.
It changed me. As I watched the election analysis on CNN this week, much was made of Obama's brilliant strategy to involve young voters via the social Web. Obama's Web site was more than a place to share his values and raise money - it opened opportunities for supporters to meet and get involved. Visitors organized their own meetings and events online. It struck me that's exactly what Web 2.0 is all about: empowering people to communicate and connect. I'm rethinking all the Things I thought I'd never use. Maybe I absolutely have to use them.

Learn & Play was well conceived and executed IMHO, although the idea that we could do it all in 20 minutes a week was off by wide margin. Not to worry, we all took as much time as necessary.

Thanks to Digital Services, Organization Development, and everyone everywhere (as Vocera says) who made this possible or participated. It was great! When does the next discovery exercise begin?

Public Libraries: Bargain Beacons of Democracy

2008-11-07T22:32:00.004-05:00

How much would you pay for all human knowledge? But wait - don't answer yet!

I ran across this wonderful blog post by Tom Barlow at WalletPop about the value of public libraries and the awesome educational/entertainment bang we get for our buck. For $31 a year, the price of dinner and a movie - or a movie, anyway - every American has unlimited access to the universe of ideas. It's the democratic ideal made real.

To quote novelist E.L. Doctorow:

The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.

Damn straight.

Overdrive MP3s Arrive

2008-11-07T12:26:00.004-05:00

On Monday 11/10/2008 moldi.org, the Overdrive Web site for a consortium of libraries in central Ohio, will add 177 audiobooks in the DRM-free MP3 format. At last! iPod compatible audio!

I'll be at Main Library's Overdrive download station bright and early to load up my trusty 5th gen 80GB iPod. Many of the initial MP3s we purchased are classics (read: public domain) of literature. I plan to download Das Kapital in honor of the commie socialist Barak Obama's decisive victory over the mud-slinging mavericks.

I haven't dipped into Marx since my college days. When I crank up the Sennheisers, comrades, I'll either wax nostalgic or drop off to sleep. Or both.

Thing #22: MOLDI

2008-10-28T11:41:00.004-04:00

So, is MOLDI the worst acronym in the history of the universe or what!? I cringe every time I say to a customer, "let's visit the MOLDI Web site..."

Whew! I feel so much better now.

There are some problems with MOLDI. It's not the content - we have lots of content, although many publishers have exclusive deals with competing services and we'll never see their material.

Mainly, the problem is that the site is sooo Windows - it takes 10 screens to get to the download now button. The help pages are even more difficult; don't believe me? I dare you to read the entire Help - Troubleshooting - Adobe PDF eBooks page without flinching.

What I believe our customers want is a Geico experience: so easy even a caveman can do it. I understand OverDrive is working to improve the user experience. Good for them!

Of course those MP3 audiobook files are coming soon and, coupled with the promised Media Console for the Mac, many more customers will have access to our eServices. If we communicate the news appropriately, our digital checkouts could rise pretty dramatically. It's all about having the right tools and the right technology!

I gaze skyward and yearn for that glorious day when all files are DRM-free and play on all devices. And yes, I am familiar with the phrase "when hell freezes over".

Thing #21: Podcasts

2008-10-22T09:14:00.002-04:00

I've been a subscriber to podcasts for years. Using the indespensible iTunes (a free download here for Mac and PC) at home, podcasts are downloaded and waiting for me to listen to. When I take my morning constitutional (that's a walk for you whippersnappers) I plug into my iPod and catch up with news from NPR and my favorite organizations - almost every large group has a podcast, it seems.

I used Podcast Alley to find a couple of podcasts to add to my Bloglines account. It's a fine service but it makes you work way harder than iTunes does; the Apple product doesn't require navigation through a Web site with glitzy graphics and eye candy, just a directory.

I noticed many of the 5 Featured and 5 Newest podcasts from Podcast Alley are naughty by nature. I guess some podcasters will do anything to build an audience.

Librarians Of The World Unite! We Have Nothing To Lose But Our Snags!

2008-10-22T09:11:00.003-04:00

Comrades, the capitalist pigdog Stephen Colbert featured the following video on his counter-revolutionary opiate for the masses known as "The Colbert Report":

And don't forget, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!

Thing #20: YouTube

2008-10-20T11:29:00.003-04:00

I've been a YouTube addict for years now. There's no better place to find all the political stuff I love, the Daily Show and Colbert Report segments, and weekly "New Rules" from Bill Maher.

Oh, and library stuff too, sure. Speaking of which, here's a cute homage to South Park promoting National Library Card Week:

I think YouTube can be a fantastic communication tool for libraries. CML has a lot of visibility on YouTube IMHO. Once a video is created it can be presented so many ways: YouTube, podcast, television broadcasting, Wed site, public meetings, staff meetings, etc.

Someday CML customers may make their own videos about their library and put them one the CML Web site. Won't THAT be cool?

Thing #19: CML Tool Box

2008-10-14T14:44:00.002-04:00

How much is Google paying us to promote Gmail?

Just kidding, of course. As a gateway to Google's myriad free online services, Gmail blows all the other free email services out of the water. Many of the other tools look oh-so-familiar now that I've done 19 Things. I'm a bit surprised that Flickr or Photobucket aren't on the Tools list.

Note: time to update the page to reflect delicious' new name (sans periods).

Thing #18: Exploring Web 2.0

2008-10-10T15:47:00.003-04:00

I was scanning the seomoz.org award winners list and stumbled upon ColorBlender. Back in the day, before I was a student and I had spare time (sigh), I was a volunteer Webmaster and built sites from scratch. I know, what a quaint notion! Anyway, picking complimentary colors is not my strong suit so I relied on a color wheel and my own flawed color sense to create the palette for each site. Why didn't I know about ColorBlender then?

There are several cool tools on the site but my favorite lets you adjust RBG scales to create a color you like, then provides complementary colors including their hex code numbers for XHTML color control. By moving the RGB slides all the colors change at once.

It's almost too easy! Maybe I should have used this site when my wife and I were picking a color scheme for the first floor of our house!

Thing #15: Wikis

2008-10-10T15:30:00.002-04:00

Such fun! I first used a wiki in a Foundations of LIS class at Kent State. I was in a workgroup and we set up a wiki to centralize and edit a presentation about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA). After the presentation, we added our final information to a wiki for all the presentations.

I poked around the OSU - that's Oregon State University - wiki. I'm borrowing parts of their organizational structure for a new AV Division wiki I set up a few days ago. We have so much information scattered around in notebooks, files, etc. and a single spot to put all of it should be very handy.

Thing #17: Online Productivity Tools

2008-10-06T17:45:00.002-04:00

I began using Google Docs during an Academic Libraries class. We worked in small groups, and the groups shuffled members every week. Rule #1 was that everyone in the class was required to have a Gmail account.

For one assignment each group had to create a spreadsheet of detailed information about different research universities - number of students, size of library, that sort of thing - and we couldn't have done it if not for a shared spreadsheet on Google. It's an awesome, albeit basic, tool.

As Google and other online toolkits become more full-featured and reliable, Microsoft will have a tough time selling its top-shelf Office suite.

"Tell me again, why should I spend $600 on your productivity suite that's full of tricks I never use, when I can get one for free?"

I'm not willing to ditch Excel just yet, but the day will come, and soon.

Thing #14: Library 2.0

2008-10-06T17:25:00.003-04:00

No startling revelations here, just an observation: my major Midwest Library needs to work on the "inviting customer comments" piece.

Of course, we have carefully planned public meetings and other formal opportunities for the public to tells us what they think of us. We also have blogs for customer feedback. I think we need a method for recording feedback and comments on individual items in the library's collection. One of the articles mentioned an experience where customers could "rate" items. Personally, that's my favorite part of Websites such as cduniverse.com and Amazon. I love finding other people who are passionate about the same movies and music that I am.

Isn't the library growing from a "come and borrow place" to a "come and do place" where people can share their common interests? I welcome Web 2.0 technologies as an easy way to collect and make transparent feedback from customers about our collection and our perceived value to their lives.

Thing #12: Twitter

2008-10-06T09:31:00.002-04:00

I've been Twittering for about a week now. It's not a tool I'm finding very useful yet.

I installed the Twitbin extension for Firefox on my home Mac and have it running all the time. Oh sure, it's fun to see who's online and what they're thinking and doing, and tweets from my favorite organizations are interesting, but Twitter seems to divert me from my primary tasks. Distractability was already a problem for me and Twitter simply enables the ADD part of my brain to lose focus.

For folks who process their social network lives in information "droplets", I can see Twitter would be a valuable adjunct to IMs and text messages. Twitter could be a secondary way to communicate quick messages to customers who are online. It'd even be useful way to communicate withing CML - at least as useful as a quick email message.

If I was more committed to Twitter-style communication on a personal level - and if more of my friends outside of CML used it - I'm sure I'd value it more. As it is, it's an amusing and occassionally informative novelty for me.

Thing #10: Online Image Generators

2008-09-29T22:15:00.007-04:00

I invested an entire evening just looking at every site listed on the Generator Blog roll and poking around for more generators. I had a blast playing around! As I've observed before, you can keystroke your life away with this stuff!

I have a whole new set of identities.

Blues name: "Hollerin'" Willie Hooker
Mob name: Nicodemo 'The Slug' Abattalli
Hippie name: Windgroove Strawberrywolf
Elvish name: Elrohir Elanessë

My favorite generator by a wide margin was PhotoFunia where I produced this image of a decidedly LOW-Def Librarian! Just upload a portrait and it'll plug it into lots of different scenes, from a wall mural to an astronaut in space to Angelina Jolie's t-shirt!

Another fav is Says-It where you can put the text of your choice on a church sign, a vinyl record album, a delivery truck and more.

Thing #13: delicious

2008-09-29T11:07:00.002-04:00

I first learned about delicious (back in the old del.icio.us days) in my academic libraries class at KSU. My professor said she had all her bookmarks on delicious and never used her local "favorites" at all. She loved the universal access to her bookmarks on any PC connected to the Web.

I opened a delicious account and began using it for research, adding sites of interest and tagging them so I could easily recall the Web page content. I also have a few of my general bookmarks out there as well.

It's really cool what SBN and others have done for their locations using delicious. I may set up a delicious account for my division so we don't have to mess with updating multiple "favorites".

Thing #11: LibraryThing

2008-09-29T10:00:00.003-04:00

I've read plenty about LibraryThing and have seen a number of LT widgets on blogs. I hesitated to get started with an online catalog of my books because I knew I'd just be sucked into it.

Sure enough, I signed up and spent an hour looking for, selecting, and posting books. (Please see my widget.) It's a lot of fun, but dangerous for a guy like me who's fanatical about organizing my book and CD collections at home. Even worse, I discovered even more books that I'm now dying to read.

I'm already addicted to Facebook, and now this! It appears I can say goodbye to the concept of "spare time".

Thing #9: Finding Feeds

2008-09-27T23:10:00.002-04:00

I tried all the suggested search tools. Bloglines' GUI struck me as a Google clone (not that there's anything wrong with that). Technorati had a cluttered portal-feel to it; it also featured a terrible flashing ad that nearly caused a seizure.

My favorite way to find RSS feeds? Meet my old pal, Google. I just enter my subject terms followed by the letters rss. Example:

e-books rss

In most cases clicking on a search result takes me directly to a specific RSS feed page. There it is, short and sweet!

E-Book Readers Gone Wild!

2008-09-27T22:23:00.003-04:00

No, not the people that read e-books, I mean the crazy proliferation of e-book reader devices. If you're thinking there's nothing out there beside Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle, think again.

Plastic Logic just announced a new e-book reader that's as thin as a magazine and easy on the eyes at 8.5x11 inches. The product uses an electronic paper display, the same as found in the Kindle. It's a reflective rather than a backlit screen so it's easy to read even in broad daylight.

iRex Technologies also announced this week that they're releasing a new e-book with a 10.2 inch screen. iRex hopes to expand on the success of its iLiad e-book reader in Europe. These two e-books carry fairly hefty price tags and are aimed at business customers.

The rumormongers agree that Amazon will release Kindle 2.0 before the holidays this year. The word on the street is that it's cheaper, has a much bigger screen, and is "sexier" than the original.

Some glorious day e-books will be as ubiquitous at libraries as print editions, but not until the readers are simple to use and the download experience is effortless.

Thing #8: Bloglines Good, NetNewsWire Way Better

2008-09-16T20:08:00.003-04:00

Hey Mac people! Try NetNewsWire! IMHO it's much simpler to use than Bloglines because it's a full application, not a Web service. No signups, no newsletters, just pure RSS reader simplicity.

I first tried NetNewsWire Lite a few years ago when I didn't want to fork over the cash for the full version. Now it's 100% free and has that clean Quartz look and feel we've come to expect from Mac apps.

How do I use RSS feeds? I subscribe to feeds from sites that are similar to the sites I read daily. For example, I check the Tidbits Mac news site daily but I subscribe to four other Mac sites just to make sure I'm not missing a big story.

Hmmm... obsessed with Mac much?

Thing #6: Flickr Fun

2008-09-15T15:51:00.004-04:00

To Remind Me Of Spring
Originally uploaded by the hi-def librarian

This is my Learn & Play Flickr photo mess-around. When I was a Photography and Cinema undergrad at OSU (1978-1982), showing the film edges in a print was very cool. I couldn't resist reliving the spring of 2008 - the most beautiful season ever for my lawn and landscaping - and Photography 110 in the same graphic moment!

Magnetic Tape, We Hardly Knew Ye

2008-09-15T15:41:00.005-04:00

At my major Midwest library, the death rattle of VHS echoes hauntingly. Oh sure, we still own a handful, but we yanked the format's feeding tube (i.e. funding) and signed its Do Not Resuscitate order nearly four years ago. Two years ago Variety ran an obituary: VHS, 30, Dies of Loneliness.

At best, our remaining analog formats have moved to hospice. Books on cassette have finally gone the way of the 8-track according to Andrew Adam Newman in this recent New York Times article. When Detroit ditched auto tape players in the new millenium, the audio cassette's demise was assured.

Tape may be the last medium completely supplanted by others, those being the DVD and CD. We're seeing the genesis of a marketplace where many delivery systems, including disc/streaming on demand/downloads, comfortably and profitably co-exist. Future library material acquisition models are likely to look like nothing in use today.

If only I had a crystal ball - I could retire a wealthy man.

Hello, Operator? Give Me The Library Catalogue

2008-09-12T09:42:00.015-04:00

It's a few months old now but still current: the Pew Internet and American Life Project released its Report on Mobile Access to Data and Information in March 2008.

Pew found that - to the surprise of absolutely no one - more Americans rely on their cell phones for non-voice data applications than ever before. Here's a tidbit I found most interesting:

Leading the way in this world of untethered access are young adult Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans. A majority of adults under age 30 and Hispanics would find it hardest to do without their cell phones – and are much more likely to say it would be hard to be without a cell phone than to be without the internet or email. Hispanics in the United States are a more youthful group than whites or African Americans, but Latinos’ attachment to the cell phone stands out even after controlling for age and other demographic and socio-economic factors.

Libraries are behind the curve when it comes to delivering data to their customers via cell phones. We also talk the talk about serving the Latino community, but if libraries don't step up and make their Web sites and catalogues accessible through phone browsers we aren't walking the walk.

Our First OverDrive Download Station Has Landed at Main AV

2008-09-04T15:44:00.003-04:00

Our sweet download station has been in place for a couple of weeks now but hasn't seen much action. It will, though, it will. Thanks to Mike H. in IT for creating a new profile so this baby shuts down and fires up automatically. Just one less thing to worry about.

We had one very excited phone customer who asked for downloading help. She said "I'm just across the street - I'll be there in a jiffy!" and hung up before we could ask about her device. When she arrived she proudly pulled out (drum roll please): her iPhone. Nuts! OverDrive doesn't support the iPhone yet and we don't own MP3 files that would play on it. We will, though, we will. The customer was pleased we offered the service, even if we couldn't serve HER at the moment.

Wait - I think I hear another customer pouring in now...

(Learn & Play @ CML!)

Byrne and Eno Together Again

2008-08-18T19:05:00.006-04:00

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today is a new David Byrne/Brian Eno collaboration, their first in 30 years. Give a listen & take a look:

The songs can be downloaded now for a small fee, you can buy a CD + downloading priviledges for a bit more, and for completists there's a $70 package with all the above and lots of extras.

Even better than a new disc: David's touring again, albeit without Eno. He'll appear at Cleveland's Allen Theater on Thursday October 23rd 2008. Even without Brian, it'd be worth the road trip. Visit the everythingthathappens website for more details about the tunes and the tour.

And yeah, I'm a fanboy: I saw Talking Heads tours supporting Fear of Music, Remain In Light (both albums feature Eno as a musician and producer), Speaking in Tongues (documented in the Jonathan Demme film Stop Making Sense), and David's Feelings solo tour in 1997.

OverDrive's Going Mo-bile

2008-08-11T15:26:00.016-04:00

Check out this August 11 PW article on the OverDrive Digital Bookmobile's kickoff at NYPL. This baby's a digital sandbox on wheels.

There's good news for users of that little Apple music player you may have heard about. Bookmobile visitors were treated to:

... demonstrations of how to download for free its ebooks, audiobooks, music, and video titles onto various mobile devices—including, in the case of the 3000 MP3 audiobook titles OverDrive introduced to its catalog of 20,000 WMA files in June, the iPod.

OverDrive modestly set out to create THE digital content distribution model for libraries. Their commitment to the MWA format for audios kept libraries from penetrating the huge iPod customer base, which must have limited OverDrive's file sales. By adding iPod-compatible files, OverDrive may be on its way to intergalactic domination. It's gonna take a big dog to knock them off their pedestal.

I want my - I want my - I want my MP3s.

Pay No Attention to the Blogger Behind the Curtain

2008-08-09T07:47:00.001-04:00

Let's get this party started! The purpose of this blog is:

To encourage participation by all peoples interested in non-print media in libraries.
To examine defunct library media so that the decisions we make today are well-informed.
To discuss the present challenges of analyzing, managing and modernizing media collections.
To look toward the future of consumer media, DRM, online distribution models, copyright/permissions issues, etc. and their impact of library media acquisiton and management.
To confer, converse, and otherwise hob-nob with my sister and brother library media wizards.

I leave the highly technical IT aspects of media librarianship to other bloggers and to those who wish to comment. I plan to update once a week, more often if I can.