Thing 11: Reflective Practice

Now that we are coming up to the halfway point of the Rudai 23 Things Collaboration this seems  like a good point to stop and reflect on the course so far. The main reason I started the course was to gain a better understanding of online tools that librarians use and how they use them to promote their service. The course has helped with that so far, particularly screen casting. I can certainly see ways in which we could utilise screen casting to benefit our users. I enjoyed playing around with screen cast o magic and Jing and I will be using these tools again in the near future. I have also taken part in my first twitter chat as a result of Rudai 23.

I'm really looking forward to Things 20 & 21 presentations and creating info graphics as these will be quite useful tools for me to use in my daily working life. Another reason I set out on the 23 Things course was to help me build up some evidence to go in my Chartership portfolio. With the new 'Things' coming thick and fast every week it has certainly kept me on my toes. It's been mentioned before but one thing I've learned during the course so is not to get too overwhelmed with blogging. I probably spent the best part of 2 hours writing and continuously editing my blog posts at the beginning of the course. I now try not to over think things too much and it makes the writing an awful lot easier.    

Thing 10: Live Streaming

Live streaming services such as Periscope and Meerkat really seem so have broken through as the newest and most exciting applications of this year. I've used it myself whilst on holiday to send videos back to my friends and family at home. Its amazing that you can send a video of the sunset on a beach half way across the world. I can see uses that public libraries may have for utilising these tools to promote events on their Twitter accounts. I can't really think of a standout use for them in my health library at the moment but this may change in the future.

From a wider library perspective, I read a particularly interesting article concerning live streaming app's and copyright recently http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/11/periscope-meerkat-broadcast-copyright-premier-league.

Now that live streaming is near mainstream and mobile, what does this mean for the legality of content delivered on these platforms. In all honesty, I believe that many people will really want to use Periscope whilst attending a live gig or sporting event to show their friends. I wonder how large rights holders will react to this in the future? And then of course what about people who blatantly use their devices to stream high profile sporting events from their televisions.Will Periscope and other such services be forced to intervene in someway? It will be interesting to see what happens.

Thing 9: Video

I was shocked to hear on the news quite recently that Youtube is in its 10th year. In some ways it still seems like a brand new piece of technology but then again at the same time it also feels as though it has been around forever. Its still often viewed as simply a source of entertainment, like an enormous television channel which the whole world contributes to.

But I think theres alot more to it than that. It is also a tremendous source of information. If I want to try cooking a new dish or learn how to tie a Windsor knot my first port of call is usually Youtube. So its great that many libraries are now uploading screen casts, I think its a good way of showing our users how to access e resources and so on. I certainly plan on making some instructive videos for my libraries e resources in the near future.

But for now I've attached my first attempt. Its only a minute long and the content isn't particularly exciting- its just a quick search of Cardiff University's Voyager catalogue. But it was interesting to see some of the features of Screen-Cast-O-Matic. It automatically included a circle around the cursor and also cut out the top and bottom of the computer screen which I thought was pretty useful.

http://youtu.be/nF9ySmnmuQ4?hd=1

Thing 8: Curation Tools

I chose to focus on Storify for this particular topic. I've had a Pinterest account for quite sometime so I was already quite familiar with how it worked. I have to say its so easy to get lost on Pinterest just clicking from one image to another I could spend hours on it procrastinating (when I should be updating my blog instead!).

Storify describe themselves as 'building the story layer above social networks, to amplify the voices that matter and create a new media format that is interactive, dynamic and social'. I think this is interesting in itself, its such a simple idea, pulling in content from the wide variety of social networks that already exist and organising them in a aesthetically pleasing way. Whoever, designed this tool is most definitely a librarian at heart! I can immediately think of a few ways in which curation tools such as this could be put to good use by libraries.

Firstly, it could certainly be put to good use as a marketing tool. I'm sure Storify is used by many libraries to promote events such as author signings, film nights perhaps even book clubs by curating tweets, Facebook posts and Youtube videos and putting them in one accessible place neatly organised and easy to read. Storify could be used simply to compile a list of complements from satisfied library users who have taken to social media to support their local library.

I have found Storify very useful personally as a way of catching up with twitter chats that I have missed. The most recent example being the UKlibchat careers surgery which took place last week. I was unavailable to follow the chat on that particular day the chat was later Storified and this provided me with the opportunity to catch up on what I had missed.      

Thing 7: Podcasts

I’ve been a keen user of Soundcloud for quite sometime now. Although I must confess it has been more of a feature in my personal life as oppose to my working day. I love music and particularly listening to new and upcoming bands. So I’m a huge fan of Soundcloud in terms of what it has done for grassroots musicians and bands over the years. I’m one of those annoying people that likes try and discover a new band or musician before they become famous and then brag to my friends that I’ve been listening to them for months by the time they get played on the radio! So over the years Soundcloud has served me well in that respect.

I have to confess I rarely listen to podcasts. The only podcasts that I’ve really got into in the past was the Melvyn Bragg ‘In Our Time’ series, which as a history buff I thought were absolutely fantastic. But even with these I would often find my concentration begins to break after 20 or so minutes and my mind begins to wander. I confess I wasn’t aware of library podcasts like ‘Circulating Ideas’ but I listened to a few episodes and I found it very interesting. I think it would be great if there was something similar in the UK.

In terms of my own day to day working perspective I can’t really think of a particular use for podcasts in the same way as I could for say Google Hangouts but having some experience of working in public libraries and museums I can see how they could be used effectively to record literary events and oral history projects.