Curiosity

I have been reading the blog posts that many of you have written and I find myself in complete agreement that the library is a great place for the curious person to work. We sit at the center of an infinite information repository. Thanks to the information age even when we do not have something in the library we have access to it from one of the many databases available to us.

Even though I would agree with Kristie’s comment that people in general seem to be losing their natural curiosity I think that there is still hope for us. There appears to be a shift in education coming that embraces more exploratory forms of learning. This can be seen clearly in Appleton and its embrace of charter schools. Many of these schools focus more on the natural talents of our children and focus less on making them little conformists (insert shudder here).

The reality is that the best and brightest among our species have not made their mark on intellect alone. What sets them apart is, to me, more about curiosity and tenacity than it is about raw brain power. Our world has been sculpted by people asking, “What would happen if … “

Project Play takes our natural curiosity about technology and helps us to understand it and hopefully find ways to apply what is available to useful tools that both we and our patrons can utilize to meet information needs – and maybe even make it kind of fun.

YouTube- Soapbox for Everyman

By the title of my post you can probably guess that I like You Tube as a tool for every day people to be heard. There are some in the library community that believe that this is a bad thing. They think that the lack of control will lead to a dumbing down of society and that uncontrolled sites such as blogs, wikis and I would include YouTube can’t be trusted because there is no peer review process.

To me this smacks of elitism. From a librarian’s point of view, does it make the job harder? Yeah it does. But hey that is why librarians are paid the big bucks (our friends in Marathon County excluded. Seriously though just because something makes life more difficult does not mean it is bad. Living outside of your parent’s home can be difficult but that does not make it a bad thing – it is what it is.

In exchange for this horrible torrent of uncontrolled text and video we points of view from people, some even in our own community, that we would not have heard before. Let’s face it, I would not be typing this unless I had this format opened to me on which to air my opinion. The nice thing for you is that you do not have to buy any of what I am selling. The bonus for both of us is that we get to avoid that awkward moment when I realize that not only are you not buying what I am selling but that you are praying to a higher power that my little shop of opinions goes out of business, soon, before I can type another line.

Oh yeah, this blog is free so I don’t have to worry about going out of business.

Okay, I guess I am supposed to talk about YouTube here. I did watch the videos. I liked Harper College Library one a lot. I always like to see libraries trying to break down the shusher image. I also like the Conan the Librarian video, there are some days with some patrons I could really use the sword of his.

In regard to videos I have seen on YouTube I would recommend three of them to anyone with a sense of humor (special note: if you don’t find these as amusing as I did it does not necessarily mean you lack aforementioned sense of humor). The first one is a great, and funny example of social commentary that we would never have seen before the digital age. The second is for people that have ever spent too much time in playing video games. And the third is for the Harry Potter fans out there (hopefully JK Rolling will not send Google the cease and desist order on this one).

Enjoy.

Screencasting

In my past life I spent almost ten years as a technical trainer. When I was not teaching people how to do phlebotomy I would have to teach them to use the various computer programs and systems needed to complete our tasks. To do this I relied on many screen shots and as the technology became available on screencasts.

There are two big benefits that screencasting offers. The first is that it is asynchronous. As I trainer I do not have to be there to deliver the training at that moment because I have created a recording that can be used at any time. The second benefit is that, done correctly, it appeals to various types of learners. You have the visual aspect. You can have text and audio. And though I am reaching a bit on this one I think that body kinesthetic learners can even imagine themselves moving through the process with their mouse or keyboard as they watch.

I have actually had an opportunity to use screencasting in my current job. Though it is rough and needs more work before it will be ready for prime time, I created a screen cast of the process for creating accounts using Millennium. This can be found on the training section (also a work on progress) of the circ portion of the APL intranet site.

Obviously for me training stands out as the best way to use screen casting within a library. It can be used to show patrons how to renew online, search the catalog or place holds. Within the library there are endless tasks that it could be used for.

In addition to the aforementioned items I think there is one other benefit that screencasting has to offer. I think that if done with the right tone it can also help remove some of the trepidation that comes along with learning. If I were focusing on patrons I would keep the mood light. I would also make every effort to tie what they are trying to learn now with things that I would expect them to have done in the best, including real world equivalents (drawing programs come to mind here). The nice thing is that people can watch the videos repeatedly until they understand what they are seeing and hearing.