Librarian X

I just put up my first exhibit, on virtual worlds and video games. It’ll be in the GSU Library over the summer. I selected the books and wrote the accompanying text, and our awesome designer Christian Steinmetz created the posters to accompany it. I’m particularly fond of my character sheet.

A full list of the books is on the GSU Library blog. (And thanks again to my friends who contributed suggestions.) I tried to choose a variety of books from different disciplines to show that scholars in many areas (art, business, anthropology, gender studies) are writing about games and VWs, and to give students ideas about how they might write about gaming for a variety of classes.

I’ve been working on the ALA Electronic Participation Task Force for a few months, and this week Cindi Trainor blogged about our recommendations on the ALA TechSource blog.

At present it’s called the EParticipation Task Force Recommendations. Hopefully it’ll get a better name at some point. Essentially this is a toolkit of free and cheap options to include remote participants in conference events. We’ve got links for different kinds of participation (audio, video, documents, etc) and different circumstances (one speaker, many, etc), and reasonably easy instructions for all options. This isn’t just for ALA members — it’s relevant and useful for anyone. I wrote the bit on podcasting (naturally) and SlideShare.

We’ll probably be talking about professional development without a budget on the next Adventures in Library Instruction episode. If you have questions or issues you think would be interesting to include, let me know.

EParticipation Task Force Recommendations

One of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow, just put up some Youtube videos discussing students and media literacy. I’m embedding this one since it’s the most directly relevant to library instruction, but it’s worth listening to the whole series (on his blog). I really love his ideas for assignments using Wikipedia.

If you’re having trouble figuring out the point of this whole Twitter and Friendfeed thing (or if you’ve never heard of Friendfeed since it hasn’t had a media blitz yet), check out this article on Library Journal by my friends Laura Carscaddon and Colleen Harris: “Working the Social: Twitter and FriendFeed.”

They do a great job of condensing and explaining the point of both services, and how and why you might want to use them.

Episode 3 of the Adventures in Library Instruction podcast is up. In case you don’t subscribe to that feed, here it is for your convenience.

We were serious about wanting some new voices on the show, and we got distance librarian Dana Longley of Empire State College SUNY to join us for this episode. It went great, despite some Skype glitches, and I think we’ll continue to invite special guest stars.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a sort of open-source class curriculum called “Teaching Copyright” in response to the RIAA’s “Campus Downloading” site, which has a video and informational documents about the dangers of downloading free music. The RIAA offers a free DVD for educators.

The RIAA’s material:

• Doesn’t identify the sponsor of the site
• Makes blanket statements that downloading music without the copyright holder’s permission is illegal
• Doesn’t mention fair use, public domain, or Creative Commons
• Warns students of the risks of being sued or expelled, without identifying the RIAA as the plaintiff in these lawsuits.
• Links to lots of sites that sell music by RIAA recording artists.

The EFF’s material:

• Clearly identifies the organization behind the site and their agenda
• Discusses the four factors of fair use, the public domain, and illustrates legal examples of reusing digital materials
• Clarifies the stakeholders on multiple sides of controversies in copyright and peer-to-peer file sharing.

Did you ever use sites like martinlutherking.org (I won’t link to it because I don’t want to boost its Google ranking) to demonstrate bias and critical evaluation? Wouldn’t it be a great information literacy exercise to have students analyze the two curricula? And maybe teach them something about copyright and information use in the bargain?

I’ve ordered one of the RIAA’s DVDs to use in class next year.

This is the class “handout” for my webcast presentation “Podcasting for Libraries,” June 2 at 2pm Eastern. If I’ve left off anything you’d find useful, leave a comment and I’ll update this post.

Overviews and definitions

Podcasting in Plain English video

Wikipedia: Podcast

Puckett, J. (2008, February 10). Podcasting in Academic Libraries. Jason Puckett.net. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://jasonpuckett.net/projects/podcasting-in-academic-libraries/

Wikipedia: Web feeds

RSS in Plain English video

What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part I

Software: recording and podcatching

Audacity (free, Mac/Windows/Linux, audio recording/editing)

Camtasia ($299, Mac/Windows, audio/video recording/editing)

Garageband (part of iLife suite, $79 [cheaper at Amazon], Mac only, audio recording/editing)

iTunes (free, Mac/Windows, podcatcher)

Juice (free, Mac/Windows/Linux, podcatcher)

PodNova (free, Mac/Windows/Linux, podcatcher)

Hardware

I’m not an audiophile by any means, but these are microphones that have worked well for my podcast recording. If your institution has a media production expert, they can probably give you better advice on alternatives than I could!

Blue Snowball microphone

Logitech USB headset

Software: publishing

Wordpress
But just about any blog platform will work. I’m presently publishing a podcast on Blogspot, and I’ve briefly tested podcasting from Typepad as well.

Podpress
This free Wordpress plugin allows you to easily add podcast media files to your blog, and adds a nice playback button to the page when published.

iTunes U
Information on the ITU program from Apple.

Feedburner
For analyzing traffic to your podcast’s RSS feed.

Podsafe music

Internet Archive
Much of their audio collection is copyright-free or Creative Commons licensed.

Podsafe Audio

Podsafe Music Network

Magnatune
This online music label licenses all their music for free use in noncommercial podcasts.

Library Podcasts

“Podcasting” at Library Success Wiki

Emory Library Survival Guide podcast

Tisch Talks

Arizona State U Library Channel

Worthington Libraries programming podcasts

U of Toronto iSchool podcast

Dekalb County Public Library

Hopkinton School booktalks

Ohio U Library Tours

Recommended Reading

Braun, L. (2007). Listen up!: podcasting for schools and libraries. Medford N.J.: Information Today.

Colombo, G., & Franklin, C. (2005). Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting. Que.

Deal, A. (2007, June 4). Podcasting: A Teaching with Technology White Paper. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://connect.educause.edu/blog/jklittle/podcastingateachingw/44653.

Griffey, J. (2007). Podcast 1 2 3. Library Journal, 132(11), 32-34.

Mizrachi, D., & Bedoya, J. (2007). LITE Bites: broadcasting bite-sized library instruction. Reference Services Review, 35(2), 249-256. doi: 10.1108/00907320710749164.

Stephens, M. (2005). Libraries Get Podcasting. Library Journal, 130, 24.

Williams, B. (2007). Educator’s Podcast Guide. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Worcester, L., & Barker, E. (2006). Podcasting: Exploring the Possibilities for Academic Libraries. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 13(3), 87-91.