Ohio Library Budgets

A huge "thank-you" to all of you who helped make the library budget cuts a bit less awful! 25-30% less than last year is still a big hit, but certainly better than 50%.

Free, catalogued, digital books

The University of Michigan's OAIster (Find the pearls) Project is worth checking out. It has full access to nearly 20 million digital books, with the option of adding them to your own catalog for your patrons. I first became aware of it from a genealogy blog on my RSS feeds, and I have to say, it's impressive. Contributors are from over 1000 universities and repositories worldwide. Here's the link: http://www.oaister.org/about.html

Flock, WebAnywhere and Cuil

I'm not really posting anymore except randomly as the mood strikes me, but I have seen a few interesting things lately that I want to mention. First, the new browser Flock, which lets you have your social apps right there. I need to play with it some more to decide if I like it better than Mozilla.
Next, and the one I find most exciting, is Webanywhere, a web-based free screenreader. http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/ It's in ALPHA release, so have some patience! It's great that there is no big download required, and I got it to start reading our library webpage quite easily.
Finally, the new search engine Cuil. I like the clean interface, but so far haven't tried it enough to have an opinion. Just wanted to mention these in case anyone actually reads this and wonders if I am still checking out new stuff. The anwer is yes!

New Blog at Our Library

We have a handy new blog at our library, which replaces our old "News You Can Use" link with a much more convenient format. Here's the link: http://nucuplymc.blogspot.com/

Michigan Library Wiki, Ohio U's Alden Library Video

Check it out: Michigan Library Consortium has a Michigan Libraries Wiki open to staff, trustees, and friends. Here is the link: http://www.mlcnet.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page I'm a fan Of MeL, the Michigan Electronic Library, so am always on the lookout for anything they're doing up north.
Also, Alden Library at O.U. has a pretty neat video, all about what it has to offer. Here's the link to it their website, which contains the YouTube.

My point is that a lot of libraries are making good use of new technology, and I'm hoping my library readers like to see what others are doing.

More about accessibility

Sometimes people tell me things. Today, someone mentioned an elderly relative who uses a walker not liking a particular library location in his town for several reasons. I've heard variations on this theme several times before, and thought I'd share some of these things plus a thought or two of my own. Back to the things I've heard: frequently, those who use walkers, crutches, or have orthopedic problems happen also to be elderly, and make use of things such as large print books. They do not want to have to go to the back of a large building to get to them,
and good lighting and a chair are nice when they arrive. And it's even better if they are not right next to the teen or toddler area. Granted, everything in a building can't be five feet from the entrance, but thoughtful placement is important. And floor surfaces that don't echo with every step are nice for everyone, with a nice even surface for canes and wheelchairs, and baby strollers, and book trucks, too. And as you may or may not know, some impairments are invisible; accessible parking places are often NOT very close to an entrance, which may be a short distance for someone in a wheelchair, but might be impossibly far for someone with COPD (chronic obstrucitve pulmonary disease, or "breathing trouble" for civilians).

Now, I don't think anyone ever purposely designs things in an impractical manner, or maliciously makes navigation difficult, but I do think there are a lot of people who, through no fault of their own, are oblivious to these types of concerns. With the whole world competing for one's limited attention, it may be the case that someone has never had any type of disability, temporary or permanent, and has not closely associated with others who have or do. Hence, no real awareness of accessibility is needed. We all routinely filter out information we don't need, otherwise we'd be overloaded. But there aren't many of us who at a later time haven't looked back and wished we'd paid more attention to something that seemed irrelevant at the time.

Signing Time! on PBS

Look above to see a YouTube of the children's book Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin. I was actually in search of an animated avatar with a disability when I stumbled across this, and had to post it.

Then I found footage of Signing Time! from PBS http://www.signingtime.com/and thought it deserves a mention. If you've been following my blog at all, you are already aware that Odiogo will read the entries aloud.

I like to play and am particularly interested in assistive technology of all kinds and plan to mention more of it here.

Not Exactly What I'd Planned . . . .

Hannah from Oddcast (thanks!) commented on my last post, and directed me to Voki.com, where I was able to successfully create and embed my character. You may have to pause the music from my Playlist to hear her speak.

Tourguides, anyone?

I think having a tourguide option on our website would make it warmer and easier for patrons to navigate, though I know some people detest this sort of thing. It could be optional, as many .com sites have it. Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego has a live, not animated version of this. Scenes always revert back to "the Chief" who speaks directly into the camera to the user; kids love it!

At Sitepal.com, I created a few free talking animated characters, which I'd hoped to embed right here for you to see, but that feature of Sitepal is not available at the moment, and a link asks for my login info, so I guess you'll just have to go to www.sitepal.com and create your own (2 are free)
In case you've never heard of Carmen Sandiego, click here for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Sandiego

Stuck in the 80's (Musically)

See my playlist from http://www.projectplaylist.com/ Definitely fun.

Squidoo

This has nothing to do with books and reading, but what a neat site:
http://www.squidoo.com/soundtoys/

It's all about music "Museum of Sound Toys - Online Virtual Instruments, Interactive Music Guides, and Digital Media Artworks". I was actually looking for a fun interactive music widget to add to my blog when I found this, and decided it is better to add the link itself because it leads to so many good things.

Alter Egos and Avatars

I had a lot of fun creating my avatar at www.Meez.com, I can see why every Playstation, Gamecube and computer game my youngest nephew has gives the option to make your own wrestler, car, action hero, etc. Especially when you get to be "lord of all things" and choose all the characters, like in the Sims. . . .Then I saw Her Mind Disturbed Her's talking avatar from Sitepal and was (momentarily) jealous. But I know I'll be creating yet another account soon.

Pondering whether the main difference between a blog and a MySpace or other social network account is the listing of the friends and the posting of comments w/picture. It seems to me that it's equally easy to add content and change the layout.

Don't harsh my mellow

Back from vacation and just had to add the new catch phrase I picked up from reality T.V., which I basically can't stand and virtually never watch. But I do like the phrase. Hoping to find time this week to check out some more tools I've been reading about in other blogs.

Not impressed. . .

Well, the niece and nephew (ages 19 and 20) are not impressed by text to speech, and wondered why I "chose" the male voice. They've been playing around with various versions of it on their computers for years, and it's old news to them to make the slightly robotic-sounding voice say funny things. I know it's not that new, but I think the ease with which it can be installed is a bit new, so I'm still a bit thrilled about it. And it sure wouldn't be the first time they've rolled their eyes and indicated I'm a little lame.

Wow! It worked!

and it also was pretty easy to install.

Text to Speech

I just signed up for a free account at odiogo.com that is supposed to convert my blog to speech. Any of you who know me personally know that I am interesed in accessibility issues, so I'm anxious to see if this works. I have played a bit with other text-to-speech tools, but this is the first one I've heard of where a blog can be converted. If you listen to this please post a comment so I'll know.

Open Library

Both Boing Boing and Slashdot have stroies this morning on Open Library http://demo.openlibrary.org/, a "giant books wiki" which may have half a million books eventually. Sounds like it would bring together online book content from anywhere, such as Project Gutenberg, Electronic Text Center, Digital Library SunSITE, etc. Will have to read more about it. . . .

Learning from each other

Several people have told me they've learned a few things from my blog. I'm flattered that anyone is reading it and glad some are finding it useful. I am also learning things from reading what others post, for instance roboform for accounts & passwords from Jesse's blog. Part of the whole point of us all exploring things together is to work together and help each other out. It makes it more fun, too, than struggling alone with the not-always-simple directions that sometimes seem too tedious to bother with, except for those few people with unlimited patience. (I am not among them. . . .)
An added benefit of doing Library 2.0 that I don't know if anyone anticipated is that we learn more about each other, not only the fun social things i.e. grandchildren and pets, but also useful information such as that someone knows sign language, or is a movie buff, dog expert, nutritionist, whatever. It's always nice to know someone personally who might answer a question or two.

Changing the subject, watch WYTV 33 tonight to see one of our patrons answer Len Rome's "Question of the Day". We don't know his name, but he said he'd be back to sign autographs ; )

The photo things really are fun. From reading other people's blogs, I decided to play with Dumpr.net, which couldn't be easier. I only have a few pix in flicker to work with right now, but made them both into sketches and antiqued them, also tried the distorting circle feature and the Easter egg. Silly! And it's a lot of fun to browse through the creative photos on Flickr. I have some saved into my favorites http://www.flickr.com/photos/99416963@N00/favorites/, mostly book related but there's a pumpkin one for Linda.

Thing 23 reflections

This is an easy task, because a few of the "things" stand out as favorites. I particularly enjoyed Technorati because I like just popping in or browsing a tag (i.e., "funny") and being able to immediately have the choice of blogs, videos, music, pictures, etc. And it all loads fast and easily. And if you've been reading my other blog entries, you already know I'm very fond of the RSS feeds, and yesterday I discovered podcasts can be added to them. Zoho also has intrigued me a bit, because I noticed it has several features that Word does not have, and it also is easy to use.

I don't particularly like having about 50-100 different logins and passwords for all my accounts, but someone is probably hard at work to fix that inconvenience.
And there are a few things I probably won't use again, but I still like the idea of knowing what they are if they come up in conversation.

As for more programs like this, I read in Library Hotline that 2.1 is in the works!