CALA collecting donations to assist China
The Chinese American Librarians Association (an affiliate of the American Library Association) is collecting donations to assist those devastated by the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province. For more information please visit their donations page.
Telling tales with VoiceThread
To continue from my previous post on story telling and social networks, I’ve come across another excellent piece of software (thanks to Museum 2.0) that allows people to tell collaborative stories.
VoiceThread is…
an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. They can even be exported to an Archival Movie for offline use on a DVD or video-enabled MP3 player. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world.
If you are curious, I suggest that you go to the site and experiment with it by setting up a free account. While rather limited, it will allow you to get a feel for the software. Although there are other programs that allow for you to post images and then comment on them as a slideshow, the collaborative aspect and ease of use set VoiceThread apart.
An interesting use for VoiceThread in a public library, that would create engagement with and among the community, would be to get patrons to submit photos of their favorite places and people in their neighbourhoods and them allow both them and others to comment on them, creating a collective and collaborative conversation.
I have created a small VoiceThread on a new section of my blog. Enjoy and please feel free to add comments if you have a VoiceThread account.
Linkory and creating community through shared memories
If Walter Fisher is right , and people are essentially storytellers, then we should all be logging in to Linkory. This site allows you to post you memories along with images or video, which…
…will act as the first link in a chain. Others in the global community with similar experiences will add to the chain. This powerful and exciting Linkory process will reveal the complete recollection of an event, enhance the experience for all participants, and generate an historical sequence.
It will be interesting to see how Linkory develops and the nature of the social networks that spring up around it.
When it comes to using technology, narrative, and memory to create community, a more interesting approach, in that it is often tied to place, is digital storytelling, which is the use of digital media to record and share stories. The Center for Digital Storytelling and Creative Narrations offer plenty of examples and resources for those who are curious.
And don’t forget that May 16 is the International Day for Sharing Life Stories.
One Big Library Unconference
I’m really looking forward to this…
The One Big Library Unconference is a one-day gathering of librarians, technologists and other interested people, talking about the present and future of libraries. It’s organized and sponsored by York University Libraries and the YUL Emerging Technologies Interest Group.
I hope to see you there.
Data visualization, aesthetics, and a few useful programs
Most library OPAC’s, and even library websites, are lacking when it comes to the presentation of information or data visualization. They are difficult to navigate, boring to look at, and using them tends to be a chore. The blog Information Aesthetics authored by Andrew Vande Moere has some interesting thoughts on the connections between information and visualization;
…information visualization can be enriched with the principles of creative design and art, to develop valuable data representations that address the emotional experience of users, instead of solely focusing on typical task effectiveness metrics. As information access enters the everyday life of users and becomes increasingly ubiquitous and pervasive, novel approaches are required that take into account considerations of user engagement and visual aesthetics. Instead of evaluating such information applications by measuring task performance and comprehension effectiveness, one should consider to determine user interest, attention, focus, enjoyment and curiosity.
If you want to find out more, an excellent presentation by Eric Rodenbeck on mapping and data visualization has just been posted at Information Aesthetics, along with a few others that are worth checking out. Read more
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