Jeroen van Beijnen (Dutch) links to Idée Labs (English), which is playing with image recognition and visual search software. One of their neat tools is Multicolr, which searches among 10 million Flickr images for those with the colour(s) you select.
[Now, if you combined this functionality with book cover images in the catalogue... I do have to admit that my scheme to take over the world and add cover colour as a MARC field to improve searchability has a subtle yet important flaw: people aren't necessarily any more accurate in their memory of what a book looks like than in what it's called, who it's by, or what the course code is that it's a textbook for.]
Bibliobsession talks about an idea for an express computer station where readers can scan in a book's barcode and find reviews of its contents (French): "It's never been as easy to get hold of a book. On the other hand, it's never been as difficult to make choices among the abundance of titles. Note that this doesn't mean that libraries no longer have the function of providing access, but simply that this can no longer be our main raison d'etre."
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Completely legal video remixing
It wouldn't be strictly legal, though it ought to be, to remix clips from a TV show with pop music to create my own music video, so naturally I've never done such a thing, or at least if I have you can't prove it.
But for a while I have been considering grabbing some out-of-copyright music from Project Gutenberg, and some historical video clips from... well, Google used to have a bunch if I can just find them again, and Gutenberg has a few... and doing a completely legal remix. Just as soon as I have time.
Today I found out about Memory Maker which does just that:
Being theme-based, the selection of clips is small, and what you can do with them isn't as complex as what you could do in, say, iMovie - but it's an incredibly smooth click, drag and play interface. Head on over to see what videos people have made with it and make one yourself.
But for a while I have been considering grabbing some out-of-copyright music from Project Gutenberg, and some historical video clips from... well, Google used to have a bunch if I can just find them again, and Gutenberg has a few... and doing a completely legal remix. Just as soon as I have time.
Today I found out about Memory Maker which does just that:
Craft your own expression of what 'Coming Home' means with this video mixing tool. Remix photographs, graphics, film clips, and music from the years following the First World War and then share your new video with friends and family. The Memory Maker is hosted by the Auckland Museum, with members of the National Digital Forum and others providing the unique content.
Being theme-based, the selection of clips is small, and what you can do with them isn't as complex as what you could do in, say, iMovie - but it's an incredibly smooth click, drag and play interface. Head on over to see what videos people have made with it and make one yourself.
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Hanging books
In a micro-update to my non-English blogs series: Vagabondages (French) shows off several methods people have come up with to hang books rather than just plonk them on a shelf.I must have had this in my mind when I was trying to figure out how to display all the piles of books I'd got several of the branch libraries to send me for a summer reading / job hunting display. Because flash out of nowhere I realised that our book display whatchamacallits could hang quite nicely over the top of our display stand.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
LIANZA 2008 Day 4 summing up
It's weird that it's now over and moreover I'm not just back at home with my cat (who cuddled up to me all night) but also back at work. Day 4 was as great as all the rest.
Marilyn Waring started off talking about her work with various communities, and how quantitative "objective" research just isn't sufficient to work out what the underlying problem is in a lot of cases - you need to talk to the people living the experience and get them involved in the research.
Meg Upjohn and I talked about our Library on Location trials. Kris liveblogged our talk and the questions and answers. We really enjoyed presenting and the audience was great.
At lunch I went to the Aotearoa People's Network presentation -- it was really inspiring hearing how the implementation has affected so many communities which would otherwise be left out, or at least left for last, in a market-driven majority-rules approach.
Helen Mandl talked about the extension built onto their library and the ensuing refurbishment. There was nothing revolutionary but we did get to see how the 'learning commons' ideas could be applied in a practical way.
Dylan Horrocks gave the last keynote, bookending the conference - talking about how the stringent anti-piracy laws don't actually benefit the artists, but rather the corporations; and how peer-to-peer file-sharing is going to become more and more predominant and change the economic model. Did I mention he's a great speaker and very entertaining?
I kept up the liveblogging: see Waring and Horrocks and Aotearoa People's Network and Mandl (you'll need to scroll down as this link contains three days' worth of stuff now).
Food report for the day: I forget morning tea as we were preparing for our talk. Another buffet lunch - took it into a lunch session so had somewhere to sit while eating. Small scones with jam and cream to taste for afternoon tea - very tasty though the jam was quite sticky to spread.
Marilyn Waring started off talking about her work with various communities, and how quantitative "objective" research just isn't sufficient to work out what the underlying problem is in a lot of cases - you need to talk to the people living the experience and get them involved in the research.
Meg Upjohn and I talked about our Library on Location trials. Kris liveblogged our talk and the questions and answers. We really enjoyed presenting and the audience was great.
At lunch I went to the Aotearoa People's Network presentation -- it was really inspiring hearing how the implementation has affected so many communities which would otherwise be left out, or at least left for last, in a market-driven majority-rules approach.
Helen Mandl talked about the extension built onto their library and the ensuing refurbishment. There was nothing revolutionary but we did get to see how the 'learning commons' ideas could be applied in a practical way.
Dylan Horrocks gave the last keynote, bookending the conference - talking about how the stringent anti-piracy laws don't actually benefit the artists, but rather the corporations; and how peer-to-peer file-sharing is going to become more and more predominant and change the economic model. Did I mention he's a great speaker and very entertaining?
I kept up the liveblogging: see Waring and Horrocks and Aotearoa People's Network and Mandl (you'll need to scroll down as this link contains three days' worth of stuff now).
Food report for the day: I forget morning tea as we were preparing for our talk. Another buffet lunch - took it into a lunch session so had somewhere to sit while eating. Small scones with jam and cream to taste for afternoon tea - very tasty though the jam was quite sticky to spread.
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
LIANZA 2008 Day 4 keynotes liveblogging
We'll be starting again at 9am NZ time (that's one hour from when I post this). The concurrent sessions I'm attending today will be liveblogged separately as usual.
LIANZA 2008 Day 3 summing up
Today was slightly more leisurely - I still think I got my full money's worth, just that it's nice to come out and have enough brain left that you can remember what sessions you've been to without checking your notes.
First off, Lawrence Lessig's keynote was fantastic. For one thing, he's got a quick thumb on the powerpoint clicker, and his voice/slide synchronisation is so perfect that the images become an extension of his voice -- from a technical standpoint alone it was a joy to watch. His message was great too: he started off talking about the much broader context of corruption in government, justice and health, and then brought in copyright and libraries in a way that made us a part of that context: it was really moving and inspiring. With questions as well we ran over the scheduled time, and I'm sure we would gladly have listened to him for another hour as well. If you want to know more, you can read the live-blogging Kathryn, Kris and I did of the talk.
We then had the LIANZA fellowship awards and the AGM. I virtuously went to the AGM -- but must confess that when I saw that the first slide was "financial audit", I followed the unconference "two feet" rule and went back to the exhibition area. Sorry if I let the side down... but the vendors had jelly beans.
Speaking of vendors, the conference organisers had the brilliant idea this year of an "Exhibition Passport" - a card with a square for each exhibitor. If you all the squares stamped, you can enter a prize draw. It's a great way of getting people to visit stands they mightn't otherwise stop at, and it makes a great ice-breaker too -- one doesn't feel quite as greedy asking for a stamp as asking for a pen.
At lunch I went to the SLIS meeting because they were playing half of the video of Stephen Abram's speech from when he visited Wellington. The video didn't do justice to what was obviously a greatly appreciated talk but I was impressed by the way he adapted his speech to include a huge amount of local-relevant content.
My first session of the afternoon was a Second Life workshop led by Kathryn Greenhill. It was a great introduction and tremendous fun -- even if we never figured out why the scripts on my bookcase wouldn't work! At least I could see how it was working for others. At the end I snagged a moment to have a quick fly around the island.
I got back into the live-blogging with Lynette Makin's "Homework on Wheels", talking about the bookmobile initiatives in the Upper Murray region. It's a bit tangential to the work Meg Upjohn and I have done on Library on Location but wonderful to hear how varied the things were that they could do with this service.
The final session I was tossing up between three, but ended up at the Unconference one by Kathryn Greenhill and Constance Wiebrands, and I'm very glad I did. They gave a smooth and energetic presentation, demonstrated a Library Karaoke and a Libjam session with amazing flair, involved the audience, and just generally taught me a whole lot that I hadn't known before. It was particularly good hearing audience experiences of unconference-type things going on in NZ already.
My liveblogging of Abrams, Makin, and Greenhill and Wiebrands is here (you'll need to scroll down as this link contains two days' worth of stuff now).
Finished at 5pm and had a quiet evening before practising for the presentation Meg and I are giving on Wednesday.
Food report for the day: Morning tea appears to have been forgettable, but I'm sure it was perfectly pleasant. We had another delicious but awkward buffet-style lunch (ended up finding a wall where we could sit on the floor) concluded with macadamia-and-caramel tarts (a bit too sweet) and small chocolate cakes (not too rich). Afternoon tea consisted of absolutely divine fruit kebabs (grape, rockmelon, honeydew melon, and pineapple) which had me going back for seconds more than once. We had these another morning, but I was very glad to see them make an encore.
First off, Lawrence Lessig's keynote was fantastic. For one thing, he's got a quick thumb on the powerpoint clicker, and his voice/slide synchronisation is so perfect that the images become an extension of his voice -- from a technical standpoint alone it was a joy to watch. His message was great too: he started off talking about the much broader context of corruption in government, justice and health, and then brought in copyright and libraries in a way that made us a part of that context: it was really moving and inspiring. With questions as well we ran over the scheduled time, and I'm sure we would gladly have listened to him for another hour as well. If you want to know more, you can read the live-blogging Kathryn, Kris and I did of the talk.
We then had the LIANZA fellowship awards and the AGM. I virtuously went to the AGM -- but must confess that when I saw that the first slide was "financial audit", I followed the unconference "two feet" rule and went back to the exhibition area. Sorry if I let the side down... but the vendors had jelly beans.
Speaking of vendors, the conference organisers had the brilliant idea this year of an "Exhibition Passport" - a card with a square for each exhibitor. If you all the squares stamped, you can enter a prize draw. It's a great way of getting people to visit stands they mightn't otherwise stop at, and it makes a great ice-breaker too -- one doesn't feel quite as greedy asking for a stamp as asking for a pen.
At lunch I went to the SLIS meeting because they were playing half of the video of Stephen Abram's speech from when he visited Wellington. The video didn't do justice to what was obviously a greatly appreciated talk but I was impressed by the way he adapted his speech to include a huge amount of local-relevant content.
My first session of the afternoon was a Second Life workshop led by Kathryn Greenhill. It was a great introduction and tremendous fun -- even if we never figured out why the scripts on my bookcase wouldn't work! At least I could see how it was working for others. At the end I snagged a moment to have a quick fly around the island.
I got back into the live-blogging with Lynette Makin's "Homework on Wheels", talking about the bookmobile initiatives in the Upper Murray region. It's a bit tangential to the work Meg Upjohn and I have done on Library on Location but wonderful to hear how varied the things were that they could do with this service.
The final session I was tossing up between three, but ended up at the Unconference one by Kathryn Greenhill and Constance Wiebrands, and I'm very glad I did. They gave a smooth and energetic presentation, demonstrated a Library Karaoke and a Libjam session with amazing flair, involved the audience, and just generally taught me a whole lot that I hadn't known before. It was particularly good hearing audience experiences of unconference-type things going on in NZ already.
My liveblogging of Abrams, Makin, and Greenhill and Wiebrands is here (you'll need to scroll down as this link contains two days' worth of stuff now).
Finished at 5pm and had a quiet evening before practising for the presentation Meg and I are giving on Wednesday.
Food report for the day: Morning tea appears to have been forgettable, but I'm sure it was perfectly pleasant. We had another delicious but awkward buffet-style lunch (ended up finding a wall where we could sit on the floor) concluded with macadamia-and-caramel tarts (a bit too sweet) and small chocolate cakes (not too rich). Afternoon tea consisted of absolutely divine fruit kebabs (grape, rockmelon, honeydew melon, and pineapple) which had me going back for seconds more than once. We had these another morning, but I was very glad to see them make an encore.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
LIANZA 2008 day 3 live-blogging - now with added Lawrence Lessig
Starting shortly - feel free to comment as we blog:
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