Week 9, Thing 20 again and 21! A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto

YouTube posting of the Chabon interview failed. I received an email telling me it was a no-go, though I could not decipher the reason. But, look, librarian's manifesto worked, so I did correctly link my blog. Why failure with Chabon? A difference originally in the posting to YouTube? Length of the video--could be. Chabon talk was long.

On to podcasts. I have been listening to podcasts on an MP3 player for a couple of years, and I am addicted. Why not? Makes washing dishes or lifting weights much more interesting. But I had never thought of the obvious: the computer itself can deliver audio and video podcasts--an entire class can partake of information. Why is some information delivered via RSS and some via streaming? RSS newer and easier technology? I may never know the answers to these questions--and does it matter? The technology will continue to evolve, the important part being to open my mind to new applications.

Humorous, though not meant to be, article from New York Times recently, and reprinted locally about the ethics of audio delivery of printed books. People in different book clubs were interviewed and actually felt listening to a book the club was reading was cheating--not enough time was dedicated to the absorption of the book's writing, content, style...some who listened rather than read were librarians. This inflamed the group members even more. I guess we all need to continuously practice twisting and then straightening our spines on these issues.

Tried Podcast Alley. Not giving up on it (usually I use iTunes) and like the idea of not having to download software to utilize, but it certainly is visually unattractive and uninteresting. Did subscribe to The New Yorker's animated cartoons, and am now having them delivered to Google Reader, which caused me to explore Google Reader in greater depth. Ah! How one path keeps us moving further into the forest.

Week 9, Thing 20

So we are at it--the bane of the schools and yet an exciting communication and learning device. Could be anything in Library 2.0, but this time it is YouTube. I played with it, got disgusted with so many worthless videos, blah, blah, blah, but then looked for my author of the summer, Michael Chabon. Okay, found a video of a talk he gave recently. I wasn't in attendance--now I am. It's great--sort of BookTV but On Demand--the new commercial video by-word. YouTube, at its best, can create it. I have to fight my anti-video very strong prejudice here, and see that this is something good.

I actually joined YouTube as a member--so I could post this video link to my blog. Also posted it to Delicious because over the weekend I was discussing Chabon with a friend who is also interested in him and we decided to share information. What better way? Post everything to Delicious, and tell him to open a Delicious account. Anyone betting on this actually happening when the friend is out of town, and while he is an academic and not computer phobic, hard to do without your friendly librarian around to walk you through the paces.

Now that I am a member, I should be able to post curriculum related YouTube videos to Delicious or to a Harbor High library home page based blog that kids can see and utilize--when they aren't busy checking out car accidents, body functions, and various gang wars, which they frequently are doing.

Glad to see a list of video sites beyond YouTube. My district wants to end video access--a bandwidth issue here, I think, more than censorship. The new school year is supposed to bring a larger server. We shall see.

Meanwhile, can't wait to go to the actual blog and see if the video posting occured!