The podcasting article that I mentioned in the last show by Jaap Van Der Geer is now available online. Here's a pretty amusing translation of the section about Open Stacks, courtesy of freetranslation.com:

What are now the possibilities of Podcasting for libraries? The first possibility that it offers, is to be stuck something on of colleagues. It let even on self wait, but on 23 January 2005 served self the first podcast on library territory at from America. Greg Schwartz of the weblog Open Stacks (openstacks. just) tells each week over interesting subjects that at library work related are. That can go over affairs as Return On Investment within libraries, selfservice, or an interview with a library colleague. He does relax that on an and open manner. Most recent podcasts are came from the large Computer In Libraries -conference that past Marches in Washington DC held became. The American library practice closes otherwise excellent at by the our. They walk around goes well a to pieces furrow as it webloggen and application of for instance MSN for the informations work, but that makes the alone but more interesting. Already fast other librarians of Schwartz's example followed. Over the general, it concerned were here librarians (unfortunately not yet in the Netherlands) that already busy with the maintaining of weblogs.

I really do try to "relax that on an and open manner." Thanks Jaap!

I wish I'd seen this article (courtesy of Bookslut) before I recorded the last show:

Check This Out - The National Review's Dewey Murdock tells you exactly why "Libraries should be a key target of the Patriot Act."

The basic thrust of the article is that terrorists frequent libraries, so libraries need to be on the list of places that federal investigators can actively track them. But lest we forget, terrorists like food, so you'd better get supermarkets and restaurants on there too. I understand that many terrorists like shopping, so you'd better get all retail locations on there too. And I understand that some terrorists like gas in their vehicles and haircuts, so you might want to add gas stations, barbershops and hair salons.

I don't mean to make a mockery of a serious issue, but the argument put forth by Mr. Murdock is backed by evidence that is specious in some cases, almost laughable in others.

"While learning to fly, the Los Angeles Times reported on its front page on September 27, 2001, "Atta used computers at the public library and worked out at a Delray Beach health club."

Uh oh, better add health clubs to the list.

Now presenting: Open Stacks #10

Also available via the podcast feed.

Just over 25 minutes of rambling bounty.

Show notes:
1. Liblime - open source support for libraries
2a. Free Government Information
2b. Government Information in the Digital Age: The Once and Future Federal Depository Library Program
2c. Government Information Online
3. Brief mention of Jybe 2.0
4. Metabrainz Foundation
5a. Podscope
5b. Podiobooks
5c. As-of-yet unavailable podcasting article by Jaap Van Der Geer
6. Johnson County Library board says no to ALA Bill of Rights (LISNews)
County library vote spurs 'rights' debate (Kansas City Star)
Cohen opts out of second term on Johnson County Library board (Johnson County Sun)
Johnson County Library blog
7. Turkmenistan shutting down libraries and foreign literature
Absurd isolation of Turkmenistan causes no concerns to the rest of the world (Pravda via Library Link of the Day)

The Leather Boys


Originally uploaded by planetneutral.

For those of you Flickr fans out there, they've finally announced the new pricing info that comes about as a result of the purchase by Yahoo. Pretty good deal if you already had a pro account and now only $24.95/year with twice the upload bandwidth (2GB/month).

It appears that Google is starting to roll out a primitive feed reader within the Gmail interface. (Link via Kottke)

So there's this post that will be all over the LIS blogosphere tomorrow entitled Primitivist OR Luddite AND Librarian. In a nutshell, it's a condemnation of the "tech-savvy" librarian. I had some very quick initial reactions that, in the event they do not clear the author's comment moderation, I've listed here for reference.

A few quick thoughts:

3. Writing a sentence such as "Tehc will chane everything, they tell us" lends little credence to your arguments about literacy.

I meant to mention this on the last show, but if you're at all interested in folksonomies, you need to take a listen to Clay Shirky's presentation entitled "Ontology is Overrated: Links, Tags, and Post-hoc Metadata."

Two quick teasers from the summary: "Ontology, far from being an ideal high-order tool, is a 300-year-old hack, now nearing the end of its useful life. The problem ontology solves is not how to organize ideas but how to organize things -- the Library of Congress's classification scheme exists not because concepts require consistent hierarchical placement, but because books do."

"As we have learned from the Web, when data is decoupled from physical presence, it is fluid enough to be grouped differently by different readers, and on different days. The Web's main virtue, in handling data, is to transmute organization from an a priori, content-based judgment to one that can be ad hoc, context-based, socially embedded, and constantly altered. The Web frees us from needing to argue about whether The Book of 5 Rings "is" a business book or a primer on war -- it is plainly both, and not only are we freed from making that judgment firmly or in advance, we are freed from needing to make it explicit at all."

This is hot stuff, folks. Guaranteed to greatly inspire some, while boiling the blood of many others.

Update: If you want a little taste of Clay Shirky on folksonomies, listen to the April 7 edition of Future Tense. I still strongly recommend the longer presentation.

Now presenting: Open Stacks #9

Also available via the podcast feed.

17+ minutes of my seriously lacking verbal dexterity (fun game to play at home - count how many times I use the word "interesting"). Due to lack of available hours in the day, I didn't edit the sound to the extent I might normally. I offer my apologies in advance.

Show notes:
1. Jybe revisited
Here's the post that Paul (my newest good buddy!) mentions in his comment.
2. Podscope and the notion of "embracing podcasting"
3. The Bibliocasting listserv
4. My experience with screencasting
5. The DVD crisis at Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library
From the Tampa Tribune: County Grabs Library Remote
Michael Pate's compilation of responses

By request, I endeavored to work out a smaller file for my screencast. After numerous attempts, I produced an acceptable Flash file that weighs in at 17 MB. I had no luck compressing the audio to mp3 in Camtasia (final video would play without audio) and the other PCM compression option proved unacceptable. So the sound is uncompressed, but the change in video format makes a huge difference. I hope that this compels some of the bandwidth wary to take a look. And again, apologies to the podcast feeders. (The Flash file is not handled as an enclosure, so it will not download automatically. In fact, if you want to download the file, you'll have to right click and "Save Link as..." or whatever is comparable in your context menu.)

Update: Thanks to the tireless work of Blake Carver, my comment form is again in working order. By the way, this inglorious post is my 400th.

It appears that my comment form has not been working properly for a few weeks. Unfortunately, I had no idea and anyone who sent me a comment wouldn't have either. This depresses me to no end. I have never intentionally not responded to a comment, so my apologies to people who sent comments in the past two weeks.

I'd be grateful to anyone willing to actually reiterate their feedback. Until I figure out the problem (and even after I do), why not IM me at planetneutral on AIM or Yahoo? It may say I'm away, but send your message anyway. I have a bad habit of forgetting to set my away message, so I leave it up by default.

Again, my sincerest apologies to those who took the time to comment and received no response.

Update: It works! Thanks Blake.

I downloaded the Camtasia Studio trial version a few weeks back and figured I better do something with it before the 30 days expired. So I decided to give you an inside look at how I create my show and get it ready for podcasting. If you are so inclined, take a look at my first (and probably only) screencast.

The file is quite big. My eight minute movie weighs in at nearly 40 MB. I'm sure that there are ways to compress the file and I probably could have done some editing, but I'll save exploration of those avenues for future efforts. Consider this a test (with apologies for those who subscribe to the podcast feed, who will receive this whether they want to or not).

Camtasia provides a number of options for what actually gets recorded: a fixed area of the screen, a specific window or the full screen. Because I was switching between applications, I recorded the full screen. This leaves you with a cluttered and unattractive web page sitting next to Audacity the entire time I was recording. Too bad, as there's a beautiful picture I took of jellyfish at the Monterey Aquarium on my desktop. Oh well, next time.

Meredith has two nifty screencasts that accompany her four seven-part series on "The Failure of Middleware" (link is to part 3): screencast 1 and screencast 2.

I'm having some scheduling problems at the moment, but that's the problem with free content, right? You only get content when I'm free. In the meantime, go play with the Annotated New York Times.

On March 30, Darren Barefoot posted an piece entitled "Why I'm Not Smoking the Podcasting Dope." I took the time to leave a somewhat lengthy comment on Darren's site, but thanks to a link over at Evil Genius Chronicles, I suggest you instead read this well-reasoned counterpoint by Shel Holtz.

When I saw the announcement of the Bibliocasting listserv yesterday, I became curious about the author of the post, "Virtual Dave" Lankes. Seems like an interesting individual with credits including Executive Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse (IIS), Assistant Professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies and co-founder of AskERIC.

And, as I should have guessed, he's got a podcast feed. The content is primarily presentations that he's given. Not a bad use for the format.

Michael Pate points out the new Bibliocasting listserv.

Let me preface all subsequent comments by saying: this is a great thing. But I do have a question or three.

Bibliocasting, eh? Is this going to be the term of choice? Not my first choice. Or my second. Is it too late to suggest alternatives? LIScasting? LIS Mediacasting? Libraricasting? Infoscicasting? Or really anything that doesn't implicitly suggest the broadcasting of books (not that there's anything wrong with that concept).

"The bibliocasting listserv (bibliocasting@...) is
dedicated to a discussion of streaming media in the library
environment."

Is this the correct application of the term 'streaming media'? I thought of podcasting as being an alternative distribution avenue to streaming, not an example of it, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

"So what to post on the list? Examples of how libraries can build on the growing excitement of Podcasting; Questions on how libraries can use podcasting and other multimedia information they create to promote themselves and provide better service; Questions on how to podcast and other technical questions on streaming media including QuickTime Streaming, RealProducer, and others. In addition, the list will include postings of key articles, reports, and news about podcating and other streaming media in general and in the the library context."

I'm still under the impression that this is mixing terms, but OK. My question is "Are we talking about multimedia content or are we talking about syndicated multimedia content?" Since you read this blog, you probably believe that all media content should be syndicated and thus it is a pointless distinction. Here here. I just think it's good to have a clearly-defined scope for a forum.

"Bottom Line: We are looking to build a community of individuals
interested in the application of multimedia in the library
environment."

Very good. That'd be me, ready to advocate for syndicating the potential offerings.

"We have also set up a podcast for the list...that's right, you can listen to the list. Each post is transformed from text-to-speech, and syndicated using RSS. The RSS feed (podcast feed) for the list is at:

http://drew.syr.edu/iis4/pod/pod.xml"

Very, very cool. It's almost listenable too. Almost. Sorting out the actual content from all the header info is a bit confusing, but I imagine I'll get better at it with time. Actually, the best aspect is getting a little insight into the experience of someone who relies on a screenreader (of course, without all of the heinous web navigation obstacles that accompany browsing with a screenreader).

On the whole, I'm enthusiastic about joining this discussion. I'm not all that excited about the listserv approach, but I think with a narrow, clearly-defined focus, it can be effective for discussion and resource sharing. I plan on adding my two cents.

Jon Udell, who continues to be my online hero, has posted another genius screencast entitled "Content, services, and the yin-yang of intermediation." This is a must-view. Do it now. Seriously. And if you're not convinced, read what Richard Akerman has to say about it.

Aaron Schmidt announces the availability of the new Thomas Ford Memorial Library Teen Audio Reviews, which can be received via podcast. Nice! Could this possibly be the first example of a public library providing syndicated audio content?